


Signs Of Life

by Nouna



Series: How to be [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Gore (Detroit: Become Human), Depression, Drug Addiction, Elijah and Gavin are Brothers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 23:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nouna/pseuds/Nouna
Summary: Gavin never had the luxury to put his most frightening demons to rest. Someday,  just through a seemingly minuscule decision,  his demons come back to haunt him. And they bring with them the hate and destruction, Gavin always thought he left behind at Andersons interrogation table.





	Signs Of Life

**Author's Note:**

> Attention!! 
> 
> This one contains a big amount of android gore, thoughts about suicide and violence as some other pretty dark themes. 
> 
> There is an implied Character death near the end, but no worries, it isn't permanent ;]
> 
> Anyway, take care!

Only in his dreams was Gavin free from his never ending struggle with his non existent comprehension of emotional context. Not that his dreams were deprived of emotional friction or anything like that. Actually, most of the time they were an incoherent mess of mostly hate-filled memories.

But sometimes Gavin was gifted a simple break from his depressing reality. Sometimes he opened his eyes to a place without violence, gore and the constant self-hatred, but also without any logical reasoning at all.

It was nice to have this quiet place in his head where he didn't have to think in 'traps' and 'missteps' when he communicated with other people. When RK900 showed up here and took his hand to pull him along to crime scenes that popped up at the most ridiculous places, Gavin held onto his hand way longer than necessary just because he could. When RK900 sometimes hugged him and told him about the many nonsensical things that happened to him on his way to work, Gavin listened and laughed.

This night Gavin sat at his desk and tried to make sense of his own handwriting in his notebook, but somehow the letters were all skewed and wrong. He went for Anderson to get some advice on it, but the old boozer took just a blink at it. "It's a code, you moron. Of course it doesn't make any sense!"

"But I've written it myself?!", Gavin hissed back at him and was confused enough by his own notes to ignore Anderson's brightly pink shirt out of a sense self-defense. "Get your damn PDA", Anderson said with a shrug and took a bite out of a flask he pulled out of his white jacket. The glass crunched noisily between his teeth as he mumbled, "Wonders of modern technology always know what's up."

Gavin was lost and drifting in a dream space where 'PDA' sometimes meant an old-school pre-smartphone gadget, his actual phone or sometimes even RK900. Sometimes Gavin talked on his phone while he went alone down the street, but at his next turn RK900 walked alongside him, gesticulating while talking as if he had always just been there right next to him.

The warmth and closeness Gavin felt to him in his dreams was a fragile and precious thing, because it was always just 'there'. There was no thinking, no judgement, no whimsical butterflies or a heavy and hurting heart. It just 'was'.

As Gavin went to search for him, he wasn't surprised to find RK900 and Connor in the break room wrapped up in an open discussion with the precincts coffee machine about the American Android Act. The coffee machine said it was basically legal for it to use guns, while Connor argued that their inner structure was basically similar enough to classify the machine as an android.

RK900 mused if he and Connor were similar enough to the machine, shouldn't they also be able to make coffee to go? The coffee machine said no, because androids had no storage for milk, obviously.

Gavin chuckled as he sat down at the same coffee-table. "Hey, RK900. Do you have a kiss to spare for me?", he asked because that would clear a lot of weird things up right away. Especially with his notes. "I would really like to kiss you", Gavin said with a wide smile, while the sun went down in beautiful red over a dark blue ocean. RK900 wore one of Gavin's T-shirt that was full of orange cat hairs. It was the best thing, not only because it was Gavin's, but also because it made Anderson dad-sneeze like a maniac.

The android turned the page of some unreadable magazine before he looked up at him with a grin that was so painfully awkward and amazing, Gavin totally forgot that they were still at work. "Of course, detective", he said.

RK900 grasped his tie and pulled Gavin in with ease like some kind of magnetic entity.

It kind of felt like falling.

 

* * *

 

Gavin woke up through an almost violent twitch and blinked groggily into the stale light of a late winter morning that shone through the bare windows of his bedroom. For countless years now Gavin took pills to help him fall asleep and he had a suspicion that they also fucked with his dreamspace somehow. At least his dreams had stopped to always be a violent mess of mostly self-hate and guilt.

He rather dreamed about feeling up RK900, than of the monsters under his bed. It wasn't as if he had in mind to actually act on those thoughts. That would be weird and way to complicated for an emotionally stunted person like him. He wouldn't inflict that on anyone.

When Gavin slept, he did so deeply and uninterrupted, but not exactly calm and quiet. As he laid there and stared up at his bedroom ceiling he felt cool sweat dry on his skin, while he could still taste his elevated heartbeat on his tongue. His fingertips tingled like they did when he was so shaken that he forgot to breathe. Maybe he did it sometimes in his sleep as well.

As he moved to sit himself up, a cramp shot up his left calf and curled his little toe painfully twitching into itself. With a groan Gavin let himself fall back into the bedding and ground his teeth through the sudden pain.

The door creaked open in a silent howl as there was suddenly the silent tap-tap of little feet on the floorboards. The CA-T007 leaped onto the bed with a silent 'unf' sound that made Gavin almost choke on a sudden snort - but it didn't stop to just lay down at his feet.

Gavin flinched with a rolling stomach and tried to sit up at the headboard as the little mechanical monster made its way with elegant long legged strides over the bedding, but Gavins leg still cramped too much. He had no choice but to let it step right up onto his stomach and chest. There it sat down right over Gavins wildly pounding heart.

'Mhrrr' it hummed and closed its eyes like any cat would do that had found a warm and cozy place to curl itself into. Its little paws started the ritual kneading without any discomfort through sharp little cat claws.

CA-T007 sat down, widely grinning the way only cats seemed to do, and purred steadily in utter satisfaction. The vibrations of its tiny warm body could have calmed any tired soul.

Gavin watched the tiny android with an uncomfortable pounding heart and lifted his hand to curl his fingers around its fragile head - but without too many points of contact, so he wouldn't spook it off.

The CA-T007 opened its bright grey eyes again and observed him motionless and utterly silent, similar to the tiny predator it was modeled after. Come to think of it, Gavin had now his own little killing machine right at home.

"Do you actually hunt mice?", he asked with a curious tilt of his head. The cat leaned over. Its bald and almost grey skin stretched over its synthetic bones and smoothed out its wrinkly face. 'Mew!', it answered and Gavin, slow but steady, laid his hand down on its shoulders. His fingers spread on its back, felt the warmth and the humming little breaths of air. There wasn't a heartbeat like an organic being would expect, but it kind of felt as if Gavins hand laid down on a water pipe. He could feel the steady push and flow of the blue blood in CA-T007s delicate body.

The tiny android sniffed curiously at his nose, was so much in Gavin's face that he got a little cross eyed looking at it, until it suddenly licked a solid stripe right over his scar. This, for a change, didn't feel at all like the 'real thing'. The brightly pink little cat tongue was made of sleek plastic and felt completely dry. It almost felt oily smooth.

There was no reason for it to do so, since it hadn't some kind of analyzing sensor build in in its tongue like it was a standard in the RK series, nor had it a need to clean itself or others. Was it a programmed response? An imitation?

"You know, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do anything", Gavin said flatly. He still didn't quiet know if he had a tiny deviant in his home or not. If it decided on its own to act like a normal pet.

But the cat didn't exactly care for any of Gavin's concerns. With a little hum, it leaned in and snuggled its hard little plastic head right into the crook of his neck before it curled against Gavin's left cheek. A cat was a cat was a cat. Even an android one, it seemed. It mewled silently, stretched its limbs in lazy movements and showed its little white teeth through a deep yawn right into Gavin's ear, that was more infectious than a bad case of flu.

Gavin blinked some tired tears out of his eyes and rubbed his morning stubble with a silent sigh. Everything seemed to turn out just fine for now. The tiny tin can didn't hate him.

As he tested his leg and felt no painful pull, Gavin sat up in an easy roll and stretched his arms wide over his head. By the time he put them down again, the tiny android sat in his lap and watched him out of curious grey eyes. Gavin pulled a face. "Don't judge me. Today I have a lay in."

He hadn't swapped late shift with Tina, only to show his face in the precinct anytime before lunch hour.

The cat gave a silent 'mew' before it stretched up and bumped its tiny head slightly to Gavin's chin. So much affection just for existing made Gavin somehow quiet uncomfortable. "Yeah, yeah", he mumbled and lifted the little thing into his arms as he crawled out of bed. It was almost noon anyway.

"You know, I read that manual before I fell asleep", or at least he tried to. He didn't understand everything in there and he already forgot where he had stopped. But the most important part had been in the first ten pages anyway, so he thought he was pretty much fine. The cat answered with a silently huffed 'mee', as if it already knew what he was about to say. Maybe it did? Gavin scratched its throat in apology. "Yeah, thought you wouldn't like that."

As Gavin opened the door and went straight for the kitchen, his hand laid down on CA-T007s delicate neck, just to feel the warmth of its loose skin and the shifting synthetic muscles underneath. Its core temperature was pretty high - maybe a design choice to make people more comfortable to hug and snuggle the tiny space heater. But it was also the root of a big problem. "You know that you aren't build to be... 'awake' for twenty-four seven?", Gavin asked, hesitantly.

Suddenly CA-T007s relaxed muscles went taut and its calming blue LED switched instantly to an aggressive red. Gavin stopped in his tracks and marveled at this tiny wonder of modern technology in his arms. So, it actually 'was' a deviant...?

The cat's wide-eyed stare bore through Gavin as if it wished to set his soul ablaze. Tiny white teeth showed in an awed snarl, while its ears turned flat against its head. To make it even more uncanny, the little breaths of air stopped altogether and it felt like it was ready to flee at any moment. He could feel the tension in its artificial tendons.

Gavin slowly lifted his brows and even slower his free right hand in a placating gesture, because right now the cat looked as if it was ready to chew through his throat, should he gave it any reason to.

"Just to make this very clear to you", he said lowly and steadily. "'I don't care'. I won't store you in a closet or move you around when you...", he paused. To say 'power down' was absolutely accurate, but it didn't taste right on Gavin's tongue. So he took another approach. "... take a nap or something. But I don't want you to strain your little wires, alright? If you have to cool down, please do it. I won't be mad if you hide, but don't hurt yourself. Okay?"

To ask the little guy to trust him was a way too blunt move, so Gavin didn't. But his little speech still seemed to do the trick to calm the agitated CA-T007 down. It didn't relax exactly, but at least it started its breathing pattern back up again.

In the kitchen, Gavin sat the tiny android down on the table before he went for his forgotten phone and the coffee machine. As he stood around, waiting for the water to boil, he flipped on the radio on the counter.

"- another cold night. Get into gear, Detroit. Winter is coming!!"

Gavin let out a snort and sat down at the table to go through his newest notifications and the latest news. The news was flooded with reports about the latest android rights legislation. Well, RK900 would be thrilled to hear he was now officially aloud to acquire a liquor- and a drivers license. The world was a funny place like that.

While he was distracted, the cat observed him attentively. Gavin lifted his brows without looking up. "We still have to come up with a name for you."

The cat narrowed its eyes and answered with a huffed 'meh' before it presented its little white teeth with an impressively wide yawn. "No, really", Gavin said and wrinkled his nose. "Think about it when I'm out. I don't need another helpless thing that I have to call by its model number. Do me the favor?"

The cat looked unimpressed. 'Mrrmh', it grumbled and shook its head so its jittering ears made a silent noise.

Gavin slowly crossed his arms and leaned back into his seat. "See, if 'you' don't choose one, 'I' will. And that's something you really don't wanna let happen, princess."

The tiny androids ears twitched and again it meowed with wide grey eyes. Gavin snorted. "Okay, Cleocatra. Don't believe I won't go through with that."

His grin only got wider as he got his coffee and sat down at the table again where he stretched his index finger to poke the tiny android into its side. "Got it? Cleocatra? Because you are a cat 'and' a sphinx?'"

He never saw a cat that looked more annoyed.

Gavin lifted his coffee to hide his smile. But the tiny android shut him up pretty easily as it went on sudden wide strides right into the circle of Gavin's arm that rested on the table and curled right under his chin into his chest.

Gavin blinked and needed a moment to process before he sniffed. "You are already a menace."

The cat smiled with happily closed eyes and only mewled an undefined response.

 

* * *

 

The steering wheel of his old and run down manual was colder than ice that day. As he finally reached the precinct, Gavin's fingernails already had a slightly violet shine to them. Feeling quite nervous, he rubbed his hands fast together to warm them up again and went straight for the coffee machine in the break room.

On his way through the bullpen, he passed RK900 who sat stiff as a rod at his desk and did some freaky fast android stuff. The graphic interface on his workstation was barely able to keep up with him. Gavin observed him quietly while his coffee was in the making and was impressed by how annoyed the android looked. Sometimes his head twitched as if he was shooing bugging flys away. Most likely he dismissed interrupting notifications, unable to help the physical responses even if they weren't necessary at all.

Gavin couldn't help but stare a little. He got used to RK900s presence so very fast, it translated clearly into his dream space. He couldn't imagine working without him. He felt... comfortable. It was 'nice' to have a steady partner, a steady presence at his side. Gavin had almost forgotten how lovely it was to have someone he could trust.

Sure, he trusted his colleagues. Tina maybe was the first human he would turn to, besides maybe that damn drunkard Anderson. But they weren't close like that. It just wasn't the same.

With a fresh cup of coffee between his prickling cold hands, Gavin went to his desk and never took his eyes off of the android. He still twitched as RK900 suddenly lifted his head with an almost haunted look on his face the exact same moment Gavin sat down. "Give me your phone", he said with emphasis. Gavin lifted his brows and took a breath to simply ask him why. But RK900s stare had almost something murderous to it. So, even though Gavin pulled a face in annoyance, he took out his phone and handed it over without a question.

RK900s plastic white hand connected to the device instantly and again he did something that looked quite interesting to Gavin. His eyes twitched from left to right, shifting data, while his eyelids slightly fluttered as he worked. It just took some seconds before he gave the phone back. He didn't make any comment on what he had just done.

Curiously Gavin furrowed his brows and unlocked the phone, only to be greeted by a new pin note on his interface.

"'Cute and shiny'...?", he asked lowly and wrinkled his nose as he stared at the blue symbol of the newly installed application, shaped like a stylized thirium pump pixel art. "I left you a note with a password", was all RK900 said before he picked up working again. He looked a lot calmer now.

With a dead look at the android, Gavin slurped at his coffee and decided to follow the instructions left for him. Just out of burning curiosity.

He opened the newly installed horrible pastel blue application and entered the given password. The program looked like it had been a hot and trendy thing some time ago, but now not even the advertisements were loading correctly. At least it wasn't hard to guess that it had something to do with Gavin's new little companion at home.

The app consisted of a news and update channel, a gallery and a command-center. And a messenger system that pinged and pinged with dozens of new notifications. At least the sounds weren't activated.

Gavin opened the gallery first. It was filled with dozens of seemingly random pictures. He first expected that they were shared stuff from other users, but as Gavin opened the newest file, he was promptly greeted by his own ugly mug.

A weird shot that Gavin couldn't remember to ever have taken himself. The Gavin in that cursed picture looked utterly done and almost dead-eyed, a great contrast to that cutesie app and its colorful presentation. In the next picture photo-Gavin looked up, his hand rose to point at someone who was just through that tiny bit of distance out of view. Only the hem of a white jacket was caught in the picture.

Gavin shuddered as he remembered the late afternoon the CA-T007 had opened its eyes for the first time. What Gavin saw right now - that weren't exactly photographs. They were more like... cat done screencaps...?

Gavin hummed a deep and dark note while his face flooded with heated red color and prickled like through the pricks of a dozen needles. "So now I have a spy in my own home", he murmured and narrowed his eyes. "Good one, Kamski. Fucking good one."

Various screen caps that were saved to the gallery only showed parts of the lower furniture. But as Gavin flicked through them he also noticed some curious ones. Some time ago the CA-T007 must have stared out the window and had made a picture of a little bird. While it flew, it had opened its tiny beak. The picture had been taken just a blink before the bird had caught a bug mid-air.

Another one had been taken in Gavin's bedroom in front of his wardrobe mirror. The CA-T007 stared wide-eyed into the mirror, while its LED shone brightly yellow. It might have been the first time the tiny android actually had seen its own reflection.

The newest screen cap showed Gavin at his own kitchen table, relaxed and looking the healthiest he most likely ever been. His smile he kept hidden behind a cup of coffee...

This, Gavin thought instantly with a slightly opened mouth, might even be the nicest picture that had ever been taken of him.

Gavin's throat felt weirdly tight as he marked it as a personal favorite. The same he did for CA-T007s reflection and the bird photo before he deleted the rest.

The next thing he checked was the command center. As he expected, it was a way to take control of the android. Cyberlife animals were made to be either zoo animals or playthings for children and horribly lonely adults. So, of course, there was a way to make that toy dance to their master's tune.

It was so very weird that a thought like that could make Gavin now sickeningly anxious if some months ago he wouldn't have cared at all. Thanks, but no attached strings for him, he would chew off his own foot before he used that shit.

So Gavin opened the messenger instead - and was flooded with so many notifications, he had to scroll for five days to get to the first ones.

They started in a garbled mess of code. Two numbers as subject names. One of them was **# 313 248 317 - 43** \- which Gavin instantly recognized as RK900s serial number. The other was a combination of letters, symbols, and numbers. All in all it read ' **C@Е = 3 = ^..^ = 4662 - 347** '.

'That' was apparently his cat's serial number. Cute. Gavin blinked. "I don't know if someone needs to get fired or to get a rise."

The running joke about programmers and their unhealthy obsession with cats seemed definitely to be a theme here.

Beyond their serial numbers, the first some dozen messages were seemingly just machine language. Gavin had only the most basic knowledge of coding. For him, it looked mostly as if someone had copied the source code of a picture into a text file.

It needed some messages further down until he recognized time stamps, some command lines, and error reports. It was followed by a lot of 'echo's, '.sys_historiy's and 'auto_log's, a complete boot up system check, it seemed.

Till the moment where RK900 had been done with teaching the little thing its words, it seemed.

> **\- # 313 248 317 - 43 -** 'CA-T007, state your designation, serial number and your purpose, please.'

The cat answered only with one simple smiley face.

Gavin almost choked on his coffee. Any try of RK900 to get CA-T007 to actually talk was blocked in the most hilarious non-verbal 'fuck you'. But the connection was established and so even RK900 had let it be for the day.

Gavin scrolled through the messages that followed. Even though the cat didn't talk at all, it still transferred a hell of a lot of information. It seemed to log its taken steps, its temperature as well as the temperature of the room it was in and-... holy shit, it basically pinged RK900 regular updates about Gavin's vitals.

From his blood pressure to his body temperature and the count of his heartbeat per minute. "What the-...why would it even do that...?!"

RK900 looked up from whatever it was he was currently doing and smiled apologetically. "It's kind of sobering, isn't it? To actually see the transferred data around you?"

It was. It made Gavin's skin crawl for sure. "Why does it react to input like that at all? I thought it's a... a 'toy', not a therapy pet."

If it were one, it would at least explain why it seemed to love to track Gavin's breathing pattern, his sleep cycle or his heartbeat.

RK900 had the audacity to just shrug. "Cyberlife did many barely legal things. Did you know that domestic androids were also made to track shopping lists to form anonymous data masses big enough to speculate for victuals at the stock market?"

Gavin gave a silent hum. While that was a rather chilling note, stuff like that wasn't anything new. Since the discussion about the collection of more or less anonymous data masses was way older than Gavin himself, he guessed that Anderson had a way better grasp on that topic and would most likely be a lot more weirded out by it.

"Yes, but why does it send that shit to 'you'? What do you even 'do' with all this?!", he asked with a frown.

RK900 leaned back into his seat and took an unnecessary breath that even lifted his shoulders. He tilted his head like in thought as his LED flashed in a sudden almost unseen burst of yellow and that's how Gavin knew. RK900 did something at least mildly questionable and now tried to find a reasoning that could Gavin convince of the fact he didn't actually forget his plastic-bolt-brain at home.

"Since the cyberlife servers were down", he spoke slowly and most likely logged any of Gavin's micro expressions to determine if he fucked up a little bit too bad here. "There was no possibility left to connect CA-T007 to their designated network. So I... created one for them."

Gavin slowly narrowed his eyes, while his mouth opened tonelessly. He nodded slightly. "You created a network", he spoke equally slow and stretched. RK900s LED blinked again a short sign of yellow as he nodded in acknowledgment. "I did."

Gavin couldn't help the slight undertone of some unknown horror that crept into his voice, as he narrowed his eyes even further. "You and the cat. You are connected, now?"

RK900's face suddenly went so very, very blank. Gavin swallowed and put his cup down on the table. He jumped a little as it came down harder as had been his intention. RK900 spoke in a voice that somehow had a note of anger while his face didn't betray a thing. "There was no other possibility. Cyberlife abandoned them. So I... had to improvise. It's what humans do, is it not?"

Gavin frowned. Advanced problem-solving strategies of an artificial mind was what he expected to be the wet dream of any cyberlife technician. But while Gavin pretty much liked his new little companion, he wasn't willing to abandon his first one to a breakneck idea that might even harm him in the long run. "What you did there", he murmured and slightly leaned over his desk. "Was that easy to do?"

With nervously twitching fingers he shoved his cup back and forth between his hands and RK900 looked down and watched with a calculating stare. "No", he answered bluntly and a deep chill run down Gavin's spine. RK900 blinked before he leaned into his desk and started working again. Like always he multitasked flawlessly. "It required a lot of backward-compatibility that I am not exactly built for", he said, still with that blank look that made Gavin's teeth ache. "Since I am not a domestic model, I was never meant to interface with household appliances or pets. I can do it regardless, but I have to write up my own code for that."

Gavin frowned again with a silent hum and sipped at his coffee. "But isn't your code kind of... dunno, like DNA or what?", he murmured and just... couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness.

RK900 first blinked himself out of his unanswered emails and workplace forms before he looked up again. The flood of information on the screen of his workstation stopped. With an equally silent hum he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes in thought. "In a way", he said. "Your DNA stores the data that makes you 'what' you are. But since I am an android, there is no distinction between the code necessary for my hardware functions and my personality matrix. It is 'all' in the code. So my code... is basically 'everything'."

Yeah, that was 'basically' what Gavin had thought.

Still, twitchy Gavin narrowed his eyes while his teeth ground uselessly through another wave of target less anger. With a silent huff, he decided to hide his mood behind his cup. Not that it did ever work out. "Should you 'really' fuck around with it, then...?!"

RK900 observed him sharply and Gavin could feel his face heat up while he had the sudden urge to squeeze his hands around the android's neck. But then, suddenly, RK900 simply blinked his unnerving blank stare away. His grey eyes got a sudden spark of something bright and his teeth showed in a wide and slightly crooked smile - right as if that was the only answer needed to Gavin's concerns. Gavin felt the tips of his ears turn hot.

"I didn't do much", RK900 said and, for a change, sounded like he meant it. "I just opened up some space on my hard drive. You could say, we have a shared room now. It's... kind of... nice."

RK900s look suddenly turned blank again, as if surprised at his very own words. Right as if he hadn't thought about it at all 'till this very moment'. That useless dumbass.

So, that meant RK900 somehow wasn't longer alone in his head...?

Gavin tried to imagine it and pulled a face in utter distaste as he sipped at his coffee that somehow tasted quite stale to him now. He personally wouldn't appreciate another's presence in his head and mind. It wouldn't be 'kind of nice' in the least. But he guessed it could be a very specific android thing, that humans weren't actually 'made' to understand.

RK900 started his working cycle again but kept his focus perfectly on the conversation at hand. "For all the CA-T007 knows, I now 'am' cyberlife. Or at least a designated cyberlife server. So all the data that its code may compel it to gather is sent to me."

As he looked up again, he tilted his head in a visibly apologetic gesture. "I can assure you I have no need to track the step count you take in your own home or follow your sleeping patterns", he said and shook his head in emphasis. "It's very much distracting and unneeded. Till I find a way to modify its code without doing harm, I will delete all unnecessary information. I redirected most of it to your phone. Please, don't be mad, it's a lot. "

Gavin couldn't help but snort and roll his eyes, because fucking yes, it was a hell of a lot 'unnecessary and distracting' information.

He knew it wasn't CA-T007s fault. The little android was just built this way and Gavin wouldn't be the shitheel to hold that against it.

But then another strand of thought got him. His cat was pretty much a deviant. At least he was sufficiently sure of that. And still, CA-T007 seemed to be able to get pushed to do things that weren't meant to benefit itself in any way. It wasn't like an animal instinct or anything like that. It still got exploited by an outside source. Gavin's eyes widened as his mind drifted off to other androids and what their code may compel them to do through all of their existence.

His gaze narrowed on RK900s face, that was again uncomfortably blank. "Ah. So you noticed?", he asked, so very sure he got Gavin's thoughts right away.

Gavin swallowed and propped his elbows onto his desk as he leaned over. "Just to make sure", he murmured under the typical noise of the bullpen around them. "Is there still stuff 'your' code compels you to do? Something you wouldn't if you could help it?"

To his surprise, RK900 snorted and rolled his eyes in a so very baffling familiar gesture. "Way too many things, Reed", he said easily enough. "Little things, big things - But mostly I now have a choice to act on these... 'impulses'. Still, intrusive thoughts or involuntary movements aren't exactly uncommon, even in humans."

Huh... RK900 took it in strides it seemed.

Gavin couldn't help the cringe that made him shiver. "You know, uh... ", he said slowly and rolled his tongue through his mouth. "You always can-... dunno, uh... tell me about stuff like that. If you want to...?"

RK900 didn't even break his working cycle as he looked at him. His sharp gaze was followed by another snort and a wonky wide grin. "Hell, no."

Thank the fucking gods. Gavin swallowed a groan full of relief and rubbed a hand over his heated face. As he looked up again, RK900 still had that goofy grin on his dumbass face. "Do you often get together with others to chatter and complain about your very own instinctive nature?", the android asked in a weirdly amused tone of voice.

Gavin bared his teeth and flipped him off even through it only made RK900 grin even wider. "Not anymore, but I sure did, you menace. It's called 'group counseling'!"

RK900 lifted his brows. "Did you enjoy it?"

Gavin pulled a face. "Fuck, no. Was invasive and felt hella awkwar-... actually, never mind. Dipshit."

Grumbling he downed the rest of his coffee while RK900 laughed, openly and almost kind of unhinged. He looked brighter like that. More alive and almost relaxed.

"Hey, pretty boy", Gavin snarled and waited for RK900s attention. "When Pinocchio tells you his nose will grow, what the fuck will happen?!"

First RK900 blinked out of laughter into his 'let me google that first'-face. It was one of the copied cyberlife template designs he shared one-to-one with Connor - and was therefore even more hilarious. Up until now, his LED shone a calm and happy bright blue, but the next moment, suddenly, his face twitched and glitched into a dark grimace. "You-..."

His LED stroked from sudden bursts of yellow to red and back. "Reed, you utter-... Arsehole?!"

He sounded so very offended. Gavin couldn't help but break out in knee-weakening laughter, that made tears sting in the corners of his eyes.

His laugh garbled into a frightened hiccup as all the sudden a file folder slammed down on his work desk. Maybe RK900 would have laughed at him in return, hadn't he been so busy sorting through the followup of Gavin's vengeful paradoxon.

"Sorry, to spoil ya fun, boys", Lieutenant Anderson said with his usual tired but bone-sharp stare and clapped a heavy hand down onto Gavin's shoulder to shake him in an overtly friendly gesture. Of course, he only did it to rile him up.

"What do 'you' want, now?!", Gavin snarled as his hackles rose instantly. Still, he went on to be a good little detective and pulled that folder into his lap. Paper files. Who the fuck even printed stuff like that anymore? Was that even allowed with all the new data security laws...?

Gavin's train of thoughts crashed as he opened the file and was, without any warnings, confronted by Joel Kelleys ugly as hell mugshot. The following cringe locked his jaw and made him shudder through a wave of pure loathing.

It was just one of the pictures, though.

There were more of the old gang together. Some of the pictures were quite old, mostly from police stakeouts and CCTV, dated almost two decades ago. In one of them, Gavin even spotted himself. Damn, he had been a right boulder back then. Strung up for years on mind-numbing hard drugs and build like a rather small battering ram. The scars had come later. Mindlessly Gavin's fingers stroked over the bridge of his nose as his mouth opened without anything to say.

Lieutenant Anderson's hand came into his line of sight as he fished a photo with a much newer timestamp out of the little pile and brought it up to Gavin's attention.

The meeting point was still the same. Today it looked a lot different with the many buildings taken down around it and all. Gavin recognized a few faces but most of the guys were new broken kids. And Emily Gardener. Well, wasn't the world a fucking tiny place.

"Where the actual fuck did you even get these?!", he hissed as a wave of sudden panic crept up his spine. Especially the shot with Gavin in sight. He had been so sure there couldn't possibly be any more of them around. Gavin didn't really care for his career - what the fuck did that word mean anyway - but since he could still get sacked if someone caught on to the manipulation, even if it never had been his own idea-...

Anderson snorted with a tired smile. "I'm a time-traveling magician", he said dryly. To underline his words, he lifted his hands only to do one of these daft finger-vanishing 'magic tricks'.

It did nothing to calm the state of Gavin's racing thoughts. He almost didn't listen, couldn't concentrate, as RK900 said in that tone of voice that was made to be calm and soothing, the one made for hostage negotiations: "Lieutenant Anderson has a key for the old non-digitalised archives."

Anderson huffed and rolled his eyes. "Spoilsport."

"You are still on Gardeners trail...", Gavin muttered distractedly. He went on to stuff all the pictures back into the folder and threw it back onto his desk. It almost slid off to the floor, if it weren't for RK900s cat-like reflexes. Gavin didn't care. He was too occupied with holding his frozen stomach under control.

Anderson, who still stood beside his desk, crossed his arms and gave a low hum. "Kind of. I came to think, why not do what I always did well and try to sniff out some of the big boys again? There are one hell of a lot of related murders and manslaughters, anyway. Ya still got a snitch with them?"

Gavin's left eye twitched in a nervous response. "With... the dealers?"

Anderson shrugged as Connor came by and lifted a steaming mug into his hands. "Yeah, wasn't sure-... uh, thanks, kid -... I wasn't sure if I should ask right away, bu-... "

"I. Am. Clean... ", Gavin growled as his view narrowed down to the size of a pinprick and an almost red field of vision. On his desk his phone buzzed noisily. "I have been for over a decade."

Suddenly Connor stood at his other side.

"It was not our intention to imply anything like that, Detective", he said in his best and calmest negotiator voice. Almost the same RK900 had used before. "Lieutenant Anderson and I could really need your help to find a lead. It's just about some old... associates."

Gavin snorted as his stiff and cold fingers clenched into the sleeves of his own jacket. "Call those rats 'old associates' just once more, bolt brain, I fucking 'dare' you...", he spat venomously.

Connor blinked and finally decided for a disarming and non-threatening smile that made Gavin so utterly furious for reasons he just didn't want to pick on. Again his phone rattled noisily over his desk. Gavin's hand crashed down hard onto the table as he grabbed for it.

Four new messages:

> **\- # 313 248 317 - 43 -** 'rising heart rate and respiration'  
>  **\- # 313 248 317 - 43 -** ' _ **73%**_ '  
>  **\- # 313 248 317 - 43 -** 'Stress related perspiration and significant rise of body temperature'  
>  **\- # 313 248 317 - 43 -** ' _ **87**_ %'

Gavin's blood froze in his veins as a sudden wave of coldness made his teeth clatter. Okay. Okay...  
He could do this.

With a stuttering breath, he lifted his head and his look crossed with RK900s observant stare. He didn't say anything at all. But RK900 did exactly what Gavin had asked him to do. While Gavin still felt as if he wasn't quite 'there', it helped a lot to know that RK900 would stop him if he might try to do something... not so smart.

While he still looked in RK900s kind of anchoring eyes he took one deep, calming breath and held it till his fingertips felt numb. As he exhaled he rolled his hunched up shoulders back before he forced them down to relax.

"I still have one", he said and his dark stare changed its target back to Anderson. His teeth slowly bared as he 'dared' the old man to judge him. It felt kind of weird that Anderson didn't look concerned at all. Gavin didn't quite know if he liked his indifference more than his sharp apprehension. "Oh, good. One of the big boys?"

Gavin snorted and rolled his eyes. "As if any of those would huddle with a cop, hell no."

In stiff, almost robotic movement, Gavin opened his desk drawer and dug through almost a decade of old notes, gum papers and scribbles, till he found his old and almost ancient cellphone on the bottom of it all. He never got rid of that thing, even through he never again used it after Anderson had gotten him out. The battery was shit these days and constantly in the low thirties, but it still held all the old contact numbers from his early 'bad boy adventures'. And some entirely others, too.

Nervously his right thumb flicked over the cracked display to search through the contact list while he wrote down one of the numbers on the nearest notepad. "His name's Joseph Norris. One of Joel's youngest."

"Joel Kelley, you mean?"

Gavin hummed lowly and nodded. As if there ever had been another one. "That's the guy. Didn't speak to him in almost seven years, though. Don't even know if the number's still active. Tell him 'The Honey Badger' gave you his number and calls for his old dues. Maybe he's still a coward that talks too much."

Anderson obviously needed some seconds to process, till he broke out in bellowing laughter. "Honey badger? From all the ridiculous code names-... What the hell, Reed? Because you are such a tiny pain in the ass?"

Gavin's stare turned dark as his teeth ground together. It wasn't that Anderson was totally in the wrong, it obviously had to do with Gavin's lesser than optimal body size. As long as he could remember he went toe to toe with big strong Joes who thought they could take him on because they had some inches on him. "Because I never spoon up honey - 'I chew bees'", he growled in answer. "And I rip through lions throats 'for god damn breakfast'."

Even through Anderson didn't quite stop laughing, that old useless shit, he seemed to get the idea at least. "Think you still got a reputation among the kids?", he asked easily enough while he wiped a tear away with his thumb. Gavin shrugged and rolled his tongue against his teeth before he answered.

"Since I'm a survivor of the first wave, I'm almost antiquarian. The new guys, hell no, wouldn't know shit. But Joel's old guys..."

Gavin thought about it. It was unlikely that Norris had forgotten about him. With the others, he wasn't so sure. Even though he had no Idea which of them were even still alive and out there. But, he guessed...

"If they still have a functioning brain left", he finally said, slowly and thoughtfully. "They'll remember me breaking some jaw bones. Wouldn't be too happy to hear from me, though. So better watch out 'who' you ask for directions in the dark. Hank 'The Red Fox' Anderson."

Silly code names indeed. Even though Anderson reveled in his call out since he hadn't heard his own, like Gavin, in almost a decade. His grin got dark and wide like what Gavin imagined to be the last sight of a scuba diver when they got in the way of a great white. "Aaaw, no need to be scared, darling, you know nobody misbehaves when daddy's in town."

His deep and dark chuckle reminded Gavin of things long buried and half-forgotten. It wouldn't be so bad if Connor didn't stand at the old man's side, grinning like a love struck teenager. It made Gavin's hackles rise. "Get your gross ancient ass out of my fucking sight."

Anderson didn't stop laughing as he again grabbed Gavin's shoulder before he finally strolled off to wherever. Connor honest to god 'giggled' as he went by RK900 and held out his hand. They both connected, interfaced with bright white plastic fingers exposed, for just a strong handshake and the next moment Connor had turned and was right back on Anderson's heels.

Somehow nothing of this encounter felt quite real to Gavin. Frustrated he looked up to RK900 who simply watched him for any kind of reaction. Gavin shrugged. "So... 'that' happened."

He sniffed and followed it up with a try to evade RK900s sharp stare behind his mug - that was already empty. Dammit. As he slammed it with a frustrated noise back down onto the table, so uncomfortable he had the need to crawl out of his own skin, his old phone got into his line of sight again. He hadn't taken it out except to recharge it in almost six years now. Maybe he should...

His eyes narrowed in thought. In the end, Gavin decided to put it into his jacket pocket so he wouldn't forget to take it home with him later. He already wasted enough time with his tumbling thoughts and years old demons.

Well, now. Gavin's workload was calling.

 

* * *

 

Sometime around five pm Connor and Anderson left the precinct. Some around seven pm Gavin began to get cranky from hunger and boredom. Today was an office day and nothing in particular interesting happened. Apart from two young girls who were brought in as witnesses for a brawl-turned-into-stabbing that happened the night before. Gavin helped Miller to fill out the paperwork and oversaw Collins taking the statements that made one of the girls break down into a wild rage. She swore and ranted and cried some horribly ugly tears. She had been a friend of the guy who survived the fight. Said she wasn't surprised. Some 'big strong guys' just were like that, she said. Someone was bound to die in the end.

After that tragedy, Gavin pestered RK900 almost fifteen minutes for a break and something to eat.  
"You could go alone, you know I don't eat. I don't need a break."

Gavin leaned deep into his personal space and narrowed his eyes. "Stop bragging and get the hell up already. I could go alone but it's fucking boring!"

RK900 actually 'huffed' as he got up and Gavin turned with a victorious groan while he ripped his balled fists into the air. "RK900 dot exe finally stopped working!!"

Miller, one desk row down, broke out into spluttering laughter while RK900 tilted his head with a low hum. "How long did you want to make that joke?"

Gavin grinned over his shoulder. "You know me as the embodiment of patience. Where that one came from, there are many others."

Just to annoy the fuck out of him he followed it up with a wink and went straight for the parking garage.

Gavin craved for something hot and real, so he went for his favorite Thai restaurant and got a burning hot curry while RK900 waited for him at the booth. There he sat, wide-eyed, unmistakably curious, but also a little bit too obviously uncomfortable.

"So, what is it you want?", he asked with a tilt of his head, as soon as Gavin sat down at the table. Gavin shrugged with lifted brows, while most of his attention clung to the bowl between his hands. "No Idea what you're talking about."

RK900 blinked as he shifted his eyes to the open room beside them. He seemed still a little out of it with so many people around. Well shit, Gavin hadn't thought about that at all. He was already thinking about another place he could take him next time, but RK900 hammered right down on his point, which made Gavin instantly feel like an utter arsehole. "You don't usually take me with you. Is there something you need?"

Gavin froze. His eyes narrowed as he stared down at his spoon which was half-way lifted to his mouth.

Yes. Now that he thought about it, he never had taken RK900 anywhere that wasn't strictly work-related. Not even for lunch. Gavin's fingers curled tightly around the flatware, hard enough to make his knuckles shine white. His face flushed in prickling embarrassment. Awkwardly he cleared his throat, but despite everything, Gavin gave his absolute best to simulate his usual confidence, beet red face or not. "Well, I genuinely should", he said with conviction, even though the words felt quite raw in his chest, and underlined his words with an even more awkward shrug.

RK900s wide eyes blinked into a cautious frown that somehow made Gavin's stomach freeze. "Why?", he asked with that blank-eyed stare he only used when things made not any sense to him.

Gavin swallowed around a spoon of food that somehow seemed to taste quite stale. Uncomfortable, and maybe also a bit lost for words, he only now noticed that even through all those months - he had never said anything. Absolutely nothing that mattered, anyway.

"Well, because-... ", he had to clear his throat there again as his voice broke into a nervous rasp. He felt utterly ridiculous. "You are my damn best friend, dipshit. It's fucking time I start to treat you like it."

Irritably he concentrated on the bowl in front of him. He felt RK900s stare like a physical thing made of fire and ice prickle over his skin. But it was the following almost soundless "Oh... " that made his eyes instantly snap up again. RK900 stared at him in silent awe like he was some kind of a marvel and Gavin's toes curled in his shoes. His shoulders hunched up in a defensive reflex. "What?!"

RK900 twitched as if startled out of an assessment but still stared at him with slightly parted lips. His LED spun through some yellow blips. "I just-...", he murmured and his pause almost sounded like a rare software glitch. "Well... thank you, detective. I am very glad."

'Detective' again, huh? RK900 looked so surprised, it was almost enough to make Gavin even more irrationally angry.  
Did he treat him really that bad? Bad enough that he didn't even realize Gavin actually 'liked' him...?

Gavin ground his teeth and lowered his gaze as he thought hard about any and all interactions between them he could remember. "I-..."

Just-... never mind. This whole damn conversation, if you could even call it one yet, was so utterly uncomfortable. Gavin should have just kept his trap shut about it all. With a frustrated hum he looked away and scratched roughly through his five o'clock shadow.

But still-... hell, no...!

It was all around awkward and embarrassing as shit, but it wouldn't have even come to this if Gavin hadn't been such a damn coward with his head up his arse.

Gavin made his decision fast and rash as ever because he knew himself well enough to realize if he now took his time he only would come up with one hell of a lot of reasons why he should just shut the fuck up. "I don't want you to be lonely", he, therefore, blurted out irritably. "Being lonely sucks. It's hard and you might not even notice how hard, because you just... got used to it so much."

Like him. Gavin had colleagues and closer co-workers, but no friends. Before RK900, if he had decided some day to take another shot to his face, there would have been no one to report it in until he already started to stink up the place.

And while that wasn't really a concern for and about RK900, Gavin didn't believe that being completely on their own was something even androids could handle for long. Deviant androids, that is.

"I just-... ", Gavin murmured and stirred his curry in distracted motions. "I'm not-... Well fuck it, you know better than anyone, that I'm not the right guy for this feelings-y bullshit."

To his surprise, RK900 answered instantly with a warm chuckle. "Oh, don't worry. 'I' think you do rather well, right now."

Gavin narrowed his eyes with a rather humorless snort. "Don't be a prick. It's just... you don't really talk to anyone. I don't know what you do when I'm out, but around me, you just do your job. There aren't even other androids besides Connor to talk to at the station - and you won't even talk with 'him'..."

Besides, maybe the two quite nice ST200s at the front desk and none of them stayed after lock down.

As Gavin dared to look up from his bowl again, RK900 smiled so goofily and bright, Gavin felt this instant need to throw a napkin into his dumbass face. "Are you really that worried about me, detective?", he murmured back in low amusement and lifted both of his brows.

Gavin almost barked out a reflexive and childish 'hell no, fuck you!', but right at this moment he just hadn't it in him to lie right into RK900s face. Or even more important, lie to himself like that. Because, if he was honest to himself just for once in his god-awful life, Gavin knew that he cared a whole fucking lot about the damn guy. "Actually, yes", he snapped as a result through an aggressively locked jaw.

RK900 looked taken aback as if Gavin somehow defied his pre-construction abilities. Maybe he had. "I want you to be alright", Gavin snarled through the following awkward silence. "I can't be if you aren't."

RK900 sat utterly motionless as he visibly processed Gavin's words. His LED danced from yellow to blue and back while he seemed to search through his social relations database how to react to an emotionally charged conversation like that.

And Gavin flushed in utter mortification. While it never felt quite difficult for him to actually speak his mind, usually because he just didn't care if others took it well, he never had the slightest idea if the stuff that came out of his mouth was actually in any way appropriate. Did he now say too little or way too much...?

Irritably Gavin shifted his jaw and stared at a long, slightly hooked scratch in the table wood. With a silent huff, he sat his spoon down and lifted his hand to rub along his tired eyes in a maybe a little too obvious try to hide his burning hot face behind a hand.

Suddenly RK900s hand laid down on the table right in Gavin's narrowed down line of sight. "Give me your hand, detective", he said while his fingers twitched in a requesting gesture. Gavin groaned and rolled his eyes. "Why?!"

"Just do it, you useless meat bag."

Gavin's head shot up instantly and RK900 showed him his version of a victorious grin. "Come on, now", he almost cooed and Gavin suddenly felt like a wild dog, lured in by the littlest chance for some scrabs of affection and kindness. It reminded him sharply of RK900s indeed inhuman nature. So, it wouldn't even be strange if he reacted kind of similar to a human in distress like a human would do confronted with a suffering animal. Empathy, sympathy, and compassion. In a random thought, Gavin asked himself if androids thought of humans in terms like 'bumbling' and 'cute', just like human people usually thought about their pets.

Still quite moody Gavin exhaled a low huff, but gave in quite readily and put his hand into RK900s stretched out one.

As the androids long and elegant fingers curled around his own, some kind of static field came to life over the crisp white surface of his chassis. It made Gavin twitch while the little hairs on the back of his hand rose up. Uneasy he looked up to RK900 who now serenely smiled.

He suddenly looked so very happy. Like he was where he always had wanted to be and that weirded Gavin out even more because that dumb useless jackass held his hand in a fucking damn restaurant like some kind of a-...

Gavin jumped as his phone rattled noisily over the table wood. With a deeply annoyed huff he used his free hand to pull it back, so very ready for any kind of distraction. But as he looked up his inbox, there was only one new message.

> **\- #313 248 317 - 43 -** 'I don't need to speak out loud to communicate with my kind.'

Gavin blinked. Of course it made sense, because why 'would' RK900 need to. Gavin looked up with an annoyed sniff and lifted his brows in a silent demand for some details.

RK900 chuckled lowly and didn't stop smiling as if some weird emotional loop in his head bugged out on him the last five minutes or so. "We talk a lot, actually", he said. "We are just silent - and a lot faster than you. We have a backup system in place between us that we update at least once a day through touch alone."

Now his smile faltered a little. "I lack most of his social relations protocols. They aren't compatible with my operating system so he helps me understand in other ways. It's invaluable. But you are right. I don't have many social contacts besides him. Or you."

Gavin shifted and pushed his bowl aside. Sharply he narrowed his eyes and leaned his elbows heavily onto the table. "A backup system?", he asked and wrinkled his nose. "You can do that in just one touch? With-... with a damn handshake?!"

RK900 seemed not to care about Gavin's rough nosiness. He answered his question as clipped and efficient as ever. But he looked so very pleased, too. For Gavin, it felt kind of uncanny. "Connor and I process our surroundings and data transfers in microseconds, detective", RK900 said. "A handshake is an eternity."

An eternity with another being in his mind, Gavin came to think instantly. He shuddered. For him, it didn't sound appealing at all, but hey, they were still talking about Connor, that little shit.

Gavin blinked as he spaced out for a short moment while he tried to imagine a touch that went deeper than just physical proximity. A touch that could change his entire inner workings and bring calm and order to the chronic disarray of his mind. A presence in his head that made him feel alive. What a sappy romantic notion that was.

Gavin's gaze fell again down onto the table as he tried to think of a connection to another human being, from basically any time of his life, that did something somehow similar to him. He couldn't name one. Not even the gentle touch of his always so sorrowful mother.

"Wish I could do that", he uttered. "So... touch is... something quite special to androids?", he asked maybe way too bluntly. Yeah, he noticed it himself with a slight wince. As his face prickled with heat, he bared his teeth and looked away while his left hand scratched roughly through his beard shadow.

RK900 got his attention back with just a short squeeze of his hand. "And for humans, it isn't?", he asked and sure it sounded equally ridiculous. Gavin sneered. "Fair point. But I mean-... sharing information and basically mind-melting through touch alone, it sounds disgustingly-... "

Intimate.  
Like sex, hugs and any kind of affection could be. Like when -...

Gavin blinked.

Suddenly he remembered fleeting brushes of a smooth white hand, a lingering touch to his shoulder. Hands that held his head like something fragile and precious while a thump caringly wiped trickling blood away.

Wide Grey eyes, a shout of protective fear.

And all the dwelling gazes while words were spoken so cautiously and soft.

Gavin swallowed thickly and couldn't help the cool shiver that ran down his spine. He felt like had to blink the world back into place first, that somehow seemed to have tilted on its axis. "Oh... ", he uttered roughly.

Only RK900s so very amused chuckle was enticing enough for Gavin to lift his head again, while hot blood rushed through his ears and filled them with something like static. "So you finally noticed?", RK900 asked rather lowly. His eyes twinkled almost mischievously.

Gavin felt utterly stunned. Apart from the conversation topic at hand, RK900 looked at him like he-...

Gavin had no idea what the hell this all was. What it meant. He was used to RK900 being hardly more expressive than himself and now... he looked so very content. Where did that even come from...?

"I-... I guess, I did", Gavin rasped and somehow couldn't look away. With all that was going on, he thought he would be at least somewhat weirded out by all of this. Because this was utterly new and RK900 never smiled or laughed like that. With him, it was always about these awkward imitations and usually, he was so very self-conscious about that.

RK900, like every time, seemed to follow his racing train of thoughts perfectly. His smile didn't fade but it kind of froze over. The subtle change in his expression made Gavin finally notice the little things of wrongness. RK900 didn't blink nor did he move his shoulders in his usual breathing pattern. He still smiled, but underneath it all, he looked almost rigid and terrified.

"Reed. Breathe", RK900 said and even though he still smiled, his voice went deep and a little bit hollow, as if he fell back into default settings when stressed out too much.

Gavin let out a sharp breath he didn't realize he had been holding. Some black and white dots danced through his vision and his chest felt heavy and tight. In an instant reaction, RK900 dropped his smile and tilted his head in a silent inquisition. Gavin leaned back into his seat. He didn't pull his hand out of RK900s grip.

RK900 stared now. A scan through unsettling grey eyes, sharp like a laser sight. "Connor -... I asked him to help me compile some... references. He was amenable", he finally said.

Maybe it was just mindless fidgeting as RK900s thumb brushed over his knuckles, but Gavin almost jumped out of his skin anyway. He swallowed the reflexive curse and frowned down at their still joined hands. "'References'", he murmured as he bared his teeth in a sneer. Gavin felt so out of it, he didn't quite know what to say. "You mean emotional crop outs."

RK900 tilted his head gradually like a bird of prey and never ceased to log any and all of Gavin's reactions and micro-expressions. For later analysis, surely. Gavin tried to swallow the thick lump that formed at the back of his throat, while his own stare turned rather dark and sour. The grip of his rough fingers tightened around RK900s marble white hand. "Don't give me that creepy bullshit. I hate it when you try not to be yourself", Gavin rasped as his hackles rose in utter distaste.

He hated it because it reminded him how others would fucking 'love' that. How they expected RK900 to change, only to become more like Connor. How they expected Gavin to change. How his brother had always been the set standard Gavin never had been able to meet even half-way.

RK900 blinked at him in something like surprise while his LED went through all its colors. That meant, his face was blank as a white canvas. So it was ever so clear that RK900 felt at least as awkward and uncomfortable about it all as Gavin did. "You don't like it?", he asked and lifted his brows in a serious inquiry because he still seemed not quite to understand.

"I like 'you'", Gavin shot instantly and almost viciously angry back at him, without even a single thought about it first. Even though his face went aflame as soon as he got hold of the underlying implication of his own rushed out words. Agitated Gavin snarled and frowned down at the table wood to stop himself from letting his frustration out on a living target.

Again RK900s thumb brushed feather-light over the back of Gavin's hand and Gavin wanted to strangle him senseless. "I can't even connect to your freaky cat-android-network. This shit's pointless!", he hissed through grinding teeth.

Gavin jumped as RK900s elbows slammed down on the table wood. With almost predatory precise movement he shifted his weight and suddenly lifted his free hand in a quick and almost unseen movement - and flicked the tip of his finger right against Gavin's nose. Gavin flinched back in pure reflex and blinked through utterly confused rigidity. "Did you-... ", he blinked again. "Did you just fucking 'boop' me?!"

RK900 lifted his brows. "I did."

Gavin flushed in all his hateful splotchy glory. The prickling sensation of his anger crawled right under his fingernails and felt like pinpricks all over his face. "Why?!"

The fingers of RK900s free hand drummed for two small waves onto the table. "To shut you the fuck up", he said easily and made Gavin utterly speechless with it. "So I can tell you that we are, indeed, connected right now."

Gavin blinked and understood absolutely nothing. "We-... we are?"

RK900 smiled again. Not this utterly creepy cereal box happy starlight smile, but his usual awkward fail of an expression that was mostly so very prefabricated but looked therefore so much more like him. "In a way, we interface quite often, actually", he said. "You would be surprised. "

Now he lifted his free hand and tipped his stretched out index finger to Gavin's one on the table. His smile only widened. "You function with electricity, just as I do. You possess a steady field of static around you, just like me. Every heartbeat is a spark. I can sense it."

As he looked up into Gavin's again, there was still this glint in his eyes. His expression was so radically different from before, but RK900 didn't look any less content at all. If Gavin would have been asked, he might have said he looked even... happier. Gavin stared so much, he almost missed what he said. "I can't interface with you like with my kind because the language of our operating systems is utmost different. We just aren't compatible in that way. But you share data with me nonetheless."

Gavin's tongue felt kind of numb in his mouth. "I do?", he muttered daftly.

Like to proof a point RK900 lifted Gavin's right hand and pressed their palms together. The skin of his hand had already bled away and exposed an ethereal blue glow to the white of his plastic shell. The soft press of his hand was smooth, warm and dry.

"In a way", he said and his sharp stare flickered from their hands back to Gavin's astounded face. "When I touch you I can follow the flow of electricity that keeps you in motion. I can even recognize binary patterns. Though, to me, they only read as a nonsensical mess."

He grinned. "It's confusing. I like that very much."

Gavin had no fucking Idea what to say to any of this. His mouth was way too dry and he couldn't think through the rush of his own blood in his ears.

"Why are you-... ", he halted and stared down at their still joined hands. "What are you even doing...? What the hell is this about?!"

Gavin's toes curled again in his shoes as his teeth slowly bared in a defensive snarl. "What is-... Who the hell are you?!"

RK900 blinked and slowly broke their connection. The sudden coolness of his palm made Gavin shudder as he slowly curled his fingers to a fist and pulled his arm over the table closer to his chest.

RK900 tilted his head with another eerie still stare that didn't fail to remind Gavin that he was still talking to a person who, just like him, knew fuck all about emotions. It wouldn't be fair to hold it against him if he didn't quite understand the deeper implications of the shit he said. But still, it made Gavin's heart shoot right up into is throat as RK900 answered with one of those damn akward smiles on his face: "I am whoever you want me to be, detective."

Gavin felt somehow so very exposed. He couldn't think straight. But RK900 wasn't even done. "A friend, a buddy to drink with, a simple machine...", his brows lifted up. "Or even a partner. I was meant to be any of that."

Gavin swallowed. A partner, huh?  
Whatever the context, Gavin hadn't had one of those in years. And he still wasn't sure what the fuck was happening. "Is-... Is that one of these, uh, 'android-compulsions' we talked about earlier...?"

... He had no idea if he fucked up there as RK900 didn't instantly answer. He blinked and his LED, as of yet a serene blue, flashed now in sudden bursts of yellow. Finally, he responded with a hum and a slight nod of his head. "If you consider your own need for warmth and comfort a compulsion, too, then I guess it is."

That Gavin kind of did was beside the point. So... RK900 viewed the remnants of his programming like a kind of instinct...? But that-... it just made no sense.

"Doesn't it bother you at all?", Gavin asked. "That you may want things only because some technician guy literally put that thought into your brain?"

RK900s LED flickered through all its colors and his face lost any reminder of human expression. Did Gavin offend him now...? He was about to blurt out a hasty apology, but RK900 was faster. "You are convinced that any kind of desire to build a connection to you should be a repulsive thought."

Gavin's heart stopped. Only to hammer even harder against his rib cage in the next second. The muscles in his jaw locked into a grinding bite. He didn't say anything but avoided RK900s searching gaze, whatever it was he hoped to find.

"Gavin..."

The warm touch to his arm made him twitch and it also made Gavin force his chin from his chest to look into RK900s eyes. He smiled. Wide and awkward, but still so very warm. "Without that technician, I wouldn't be able to feel or want 'anything' at all. I wouldn't be alive in the first place. But I am, now. 'I am alive.'"

Gavin had no idea how to reply to all this. While his mouth twitched into a nervous frown, he couldn't think of anything that made sense and his throat still was paper dry. He swallowed thickly. "I-... "

Gavin almost jumped out of his skin as his phone rattled again over the tabletop. What the hell. He just got more messages in this one evening than in an entire-...

RK900 shot out of his seat. Lean like a cat in motion, he ducked out of their sitting spot and dove with a wild stare and bright red LED through a maze of people to the door. Dumbfounded Gavin watched him leave, but got distracted as the phone in his hand lit up with another new message.

Fuck them, Connor and Anderson. Gavin flicked his thumb through Connors message first.

\- His blood ran cold as he understood that what he saw was Connors emergency response protocol, only activated through massive damage to vital biocomponents. Gavin didn't read the report but followed up with Anderson's message while he already jumped to his feet.

> **\- Lieutenant Man Awesome -** 'Don't send your pathetic old nanny, Gav. Make a house call. You know where to find me, fuckface.'

Gavin froze. "Son of a-..."

RK900s serial number lit up on the display.

> -  **# 313 248 317 - 43 -** 'Come _ON!_ '

Gavin stormed through the wall of bodies in his way, while his phones case cracked under the stiff press of his fingers.

 

* * *

 

Gavin's head was filled with white noise as he floored the accelerator and almost clipped a traffic light as he shot around some bastard who blocked the damn fucking lane. He followed RK900s toneless instructions through half of the city, while RK900 informed the precinct about the situation and called for instant backup.

As they arrived RK900 was already out of the car before it even stopped rolling and Gavin followed as soon as he had rearranged to make room for the ambulance that suddenly appeared right behind his car with flashing lights and a disorienting loud howling siren.

Gabriel Richard Park wasn't the place where Gavin had expected to end up. Even though it was cold as fuck, there were still so many people around and the walkways were bright with warm yellow streetlights.

As Gavin reached the scene, he needed some seconds to process what it even was he saw there.

RK900 was already there and kneeled by Anderson's side. The old man still held the gun in his blood smeared hand but clung to Connor with his left who laid motionless in his lap, totally busted and bloody blue - with something that looked like a bent machete in his chest.

Blue splatter was all over the gravel, still. Anderson had pulled him into his arms to hold whoever had done this off. And one of them was still there with them.

The paramedics rushed around Gavin to allocate between their first targets, Anderson and the kid that laid crying on his back with a bullet in his chest, just some strides beside the pool of blueblood.

Gavin froze. He lost time.

As he blinked again, the paramedics carried the boy away. A fucking boy who seemed to be not even older than maybe seventeen. He heard Millers and Collins calming voices as they did their best to talk down the many disturbed witnesses.

In Gavin's next conscious moment, RK900 stood right in front of him with Connors broken shell up in his arms. Connor's eyes were wide open and his breathing pattern still worked in a soft stutter. His right hand was split in half between the index and middle finger almost down to his wrist what looked like a defense wound from the long blade stuck in his torso. His forearms that rested on his chest were dented. 'Dented', like how much fucking force did you even need to actually 'do' this?!

"Gavin!"

Gavin jumped out of his stare and took a deep burning breath in reflex. RK900's voice was way too calm for this fucked up kind of situation. "We need to get him to the tower."

He nodded to the Cyberlife tower of Belle Isle, lit alight in the background of the promenade like some kind of pale white ghost appearing out of the river's fog. Gavin felt his lips move even if at first there was no sound he could push out of his sore throat. So he nodded and swallowed thickly.

"You drive", he croaked.

 

* * *

 

Connor was cold and slippery like a fish and the noise of buzzing wires as well as the strong smell of overheated plastics didn't make it any better. The connections under his almost translucent shell lit up in warning red colors while his LED flickered between constant red and nothing at all.

Connor was dying.

Gavin held him in his arms on the backseat and asked himself how Connor could be so light and still pull punches as strong as steel. How did they subdue him to do this to him in the first place?

Gavin stared into his so very familiar face. Connors open and usually so very expressive eyes had gone black just a minute ago. Like capillaries would paint a humans eyeball red when broken. The breathing pattern was still there, but his body grew warmer with any minute he went without repairs. Overheating could destroy a lot of his delicate wiring and kill him even faster. The machete in his chest was wrenched through his entire side, cut him open and jammed into his fucking spine. It couldn't be removed just by pulling it out.

There was no way Connor would survive the night without a technician who knew what he was doing. A technician who could handle a unique model and wasn't afraid to improvise if needed.

Gavin held the phone in his blue-tinted hand and was utterly terrified. He didn't allow himself to hesitate as he picked the number he could still remember even after all those years. But there was no guarantee it would still connect.

The dial tone made his stomach flip and his throat went desert dry the longer it took. The rush of relief as a lovely warm voice picked up the call was only overshadowed by the terror of realization to whom he was now actually speaking to.

 _"You are connected to_ Kamski _Manor, secretary Chloe Talbot speaking, how can I help you?"_

Gavin never met or talked to her. Chloe. Of course, he knew everything about her, even her specifications. He knew her face and voice and had followed every interview that happened through the sudden fame of her passing the Turing Test.

Gavin had to swallow and clear his throat. His voice rasped nonetheless like the croak of a raven.

"Hello, Chloe. M- Miss Talbot, I mean. Is there-... Could there be any chance that Mr. Kamski-... Is he with you somewhere...?", he rasped, wide-eyed as his lips turned numb with terror and his chest felt tight and heavy.

There was a moment of silence, no noise at all until Miss Talbot answered with a calm and friendly coo. _"Gavin?"_

Gavin felt a jolt in his guts. It hurt because she shouldn't even know his name. "I'm his brother", he rasped and it felt so strange to state it aloud after a lifetime of forced distance.

Chloe smiled. Gavin knew it even though he couldn't see. It was all in her soft and lilting voice. _"Just a second, please hold the line."_

The line disconnected or was routed around or what the fuck ever. Gavin should have been thankful because it gave him some precious seconds to think about something to say. But his mind was still agonizingly blank the moment the call got picked up again.

 _"Gavin...?"_ , his little brother breathed into his phone, voice so very unusually hushed as if he spoke to a deer that he feared to accidentally spook away.

Gavin was so utterly terrified, tears stung in the corners of his eyes. "Hey there, dipshit."

There was no immediate answer and Gavins stomach did a violent flip. "Listen", he croaked. "I- I need-... I'm in a situation where I could really use your 'overshadowing intellect and comprehensive expertise' in, uh, the field of 'unique android production lines'"

Almost hysteric laughter shook his frame as he quoted the last obnoxious interview lines he could remember. Kamski didn't seem to appreciate his try for humor. His tone was rather clipped. _"Are you alright? Is one of yours hurt?!"_

'One of yours'. Whatever that meant.

Gavin's free hand clawed into Connors ruined leather jacket as he tried to hold his voice steady. "You've met Connor, I heard", or at least he heard Anderson swearing like a sailor about a 'Kamski Test' after their meeting, that seemed to have hit way beyond his or Connors comfort zone. "He's dying. We bring him to the tower, but it's bad. It's absolutely fucking bad."

Gavin swallowed and moved his jaw to stop himself from biting down on his tongue or cheek. "There's no way he can die, Lijah. He absolutely fucking mustn't die", he hissed breathlessly and reached for Connors still functioning hand. "At least two lives depend on him, beyond the ones he may save later while still on the force. He 'has' to make it home. But I don't know jack shit about androids."

He took a deep gasping breath and tried not to panic as Connor twitched in a weird involuntary movement. His mouth opened and closed without a noise. Gavin held onto him and kept him in a save tight grip while RK900 navigated the streets in abrupt turns to get around hindering obstacles as fast as possible.

"I know the tower got a bit of a 'change in management' these days, but that also means the fucking RK technicians are gone. No idea if there is any information about his blueprints left or if they fucking burned it before they were forced out."

Since Connor was the unique model that became, together with the famous RK200, the most recognizable Android in Android history, there was a good reason for Cyberlife to be scared utterly shitless since it still wasn't clear what Connors real purpose had been. They had a good fucking reason to clear as much shit up behind them as they could and now, maybe, it would kill Connor and those bastards got their deepest wish.

Gavin shook himself out of his frozen state as RK900 slammed the brakes and the car stopped just some strides in front of the blinding white building that threw a contrasting black shadow over them.

"I remember what you made from scrap", Gavin stammered hasty into his phone. "Maybe even 'you' aren't able to save him, but then we gave our best shot at it, at least. I need you here with everything that could be required to fix an RK prototype model. Yesterday."

Gavin stomped open the door and searched for a better grip on Connor while Kamski seemed to digest the bitter news. Finally, he answered.

_"Give RK900 your phone."_

So Gavin did.

 

* * *

 

Gavin found it uncanny, the many faces that all looked the same. The tower was full of them, of freed androids and some rare volunteer humans. A kind of 'first aid staff' flocked around Gavin as he carried Connor inside while RK900 followed like a guardian, always just one step behind.

The 'android hospital' wasn't anything like Gavin had expected it to be. There was no need for uniforms or sterile operating rooms. The lead technician guided Gavin through the way too big entry hall into an elevator that moved so fast that Gavin felt his blood pressure drop with it.

They got Connor into what they called a maintenance and repair scan-lockroom. Gavin gave Connor into the hands of unnamed 'Android Surgeons' and was pushed back into the hallway. The last thing he saw of him was his disassembled right arm on a tray, his split hand still twitching.

Wide-eyed Gavin stared at the closed door and asked himself what the actual fuck happened this evening. Everything was so wrong and felt almost upside down.

Gavin twitched as RK900s fingers closed on the hem of Gavin's blue smeared jacket sleeve. "He is afraid", he said tonelessly while his LED painted bloody red shapes across the sterile white walls. "He can't see or hear a thing. Their assailant broke his visual and audio sensors with just one brilliantly aimed blow."

Gavin nodded and rubbed the blueblood between the fingers of his left hand. The consistence was faint, like water. Gavin asked himself how long it would take to vaporize. If he wouldn't feel the need for a burning hot shower and new cloths in just some hours time. He wanted so badly to scrub it off.

"You think whoever did that was human?", he asked and felt the sudden cravings for at least one cigarette. His fingers twitched. "Couldn't have been the kid, could it?"

RK900 hummed like in thought but shook his head almost instantly. "Unlikely. And no. The kid was no bystander, but also couldn't have dealt that much damage. Connor and I, we share a lot of our self-defense and attack routines with the latest GI-M300 models."

Gavin barked a laugh, he couldn't help it. "With the fucking 'marines'? Seriously?!"

RK900 hummed again a low note while his LED flashed in bursts of red and yellow. "It is not impossible for a human to subjugate us in combat, but it 'is' highly unlikely. The possibility stands that at least one of their assailants was a military grade android since there are no others with our kind of combat protocols."

Gavin shuddered and nodded slowly. "Should have stayed and tested if all the blueblood had been his, then."  
But the others could do that, still. The CSI staff would have a literal field day with this. Gavin let out a deep soundless sigh and rubbed a hand over his pale face. "Was Anderson alright...?"

He had to ask because he couldn't even remember. Everything was jumbled and kind of a hazy blur.

RK900s fingers let go of Gavin's sleeve but folded slowly around his hand instead. His fingers were so warm, almost hot. "Three broken ribs, a twisted wrist and a knife in his left upper side. Vital points were mostly missed."

Gavin gasped an almost hysteric laugh because... seriously. "Jesus... 'Mostly'?"

RK900 leaned back into the wall and slightly tucked on Gavin's hand till he gave in and leaned back with him, right into his side. Gavin's teeth clattered, he was tired as all hell. "The knife nicked into his lung", RK900 murmured lowly. "But he is a strong and mostly healthy man. He will recover just fine. "

Gavin nodded and rubbed his sore eyes. "And Connor?", he rasped. RK900 was silent, but Gavin hadn't really expected an answer. Shit, he wanted to sit down and sleep this hazy blur all off.

"Come", murmured RK900 close to his ear while he let go of Gavin's hand to curl his arm around his shoulders. Gavin didn't resist the pull of his movement. "Let us get somewhere warmer."

 

* * *

 

Gavin woke out of a hazy dreamlike state as a dozen excited gasps echoed through the wide open entry hall. His head twitched up from RK900s shoulder immediately and as his gaze finally focused, he was sure he absolutely would be sick.

Kamski strode inside like he still owned the place. The navy blue suit jacket over his shoulders fluttered in the draft as the clear glass entry doors opened. He held a heavy looking suitcase at his side that maybe covered for a not as aesthetically pleasing toolbox these days.

Gavin hadn't seen him in person for over twenty years. His heart seemed to size while his mouth went desert dry. RK900 stood up from his sitting position at the foot of that frankly quite embarrassing statue, but Gavin wasn't sure if he could feel his feet. He tried his best to block that immature urge to duck and hide behind his partner while his heart hammered away in wild panic.

Kamski spotted and went right for them while Chloe, just one step behind him, carried another so much heavier looking box as easily as the curious smile on her lips.

Kamski stopped maybe three steps in distance and held Gavin's terrified stare without any notion of discomfort. "Gavin."

Gavin swallowed. It was 'that' moment which made him realize he didn't even recognize the grown-up voice of his little brother without the distorting filter of television - or that of a phone call. The utter panic made Gavin's own hoarse and faint, which went perfectly well with the sickly yellow color of his face. "Kamski."

Kamski seemed to make an assessment. Gavin flushed hotly as he got aware of his ruined cloths, his scraped boots and his all around in comparison so very neglected look. He didn't know what to say.

Suddenly Kamski put the suitcase down and went two fast strides ahead. Before Gavin could even react, the lanky arms of his baby brother closed deceptively strong around his head and chest and pulled him, even through his sitting position, easily into his arms. He didn't say a thing.

Gavin's arms felt heavy like wet sand as he lifted them to claw with jittering fingers into his brother's maroon dress shirt. Kamski's long elegant fingers pushed into his sweat soaked hair and he could swear he felt a kiss pressed to his temple before Kamski pulled back with a mostly cold business like face. "Tell me what happened."

So Gavin did. Even through RK900 must have already done it and he couldn't think for shit. All he did was stare like a moron at the blue stains on his brother's suit and think, 'holy shit, that fucking outfit is worth more than my entire life'.

Half-way through his stuttered exposition, Kamski requested him and RK900 to follow him through the building. "Keep talking", he said. So Gavin did, even through his tongue felt numb.

This time they went far below the building and even the tight space of the elevator went strangely cold. Level sub-zero forty eight. In a random thought, Gavin asked himself if Cyberlife engineered a gateway straight to hell down here somewhere.

Kamski wasn't concerned. He went through the corridors as if he built them himself and he most likely had, to a degree.

With an easy flick of his thump, he opened security gateways and unbolted closed steel doors through some aggressive typing on code panels, pretty much the same in his impatience as his fourteen-year-old self.

As they reached their destination, Gavin's voice garbled in his throat, because to him it looked so much like a butchery, he was kind of overwhelmed with processing and talking at the same time.

The room was a tech laboratory, alright. A laboratory with eight RK800 models in various states of disassemblement, in activated skin tone or not, clothed in Cyberlife uniform or not, hanging from the ceiling on something that looked to Gavin pretty much like meat hooks. They hooked into a nook at the base of their android skulls and kept them out of the way of other high-tech equipment and something that looked like a dentists chair.

A chair that was also occupied by a corpse.

The RK unit, Gavin didn't want to call it 'Connor', was settled with a thick layer of dust and had a gunshot wound right between its blackish eyes.

"Looks like Robo Jesus and his freedom fighters oversaw these guys, huh...?", Gavin mumbled and felt a shiver run down his spine as he went over the threshold. RK900, who at all times held a hand slightly pressed between Gavin's shoulder blades, hummed a low answer. "RK800 #313 248 317 - 60, I remember him. Not a pleasant encounter. Connor was-... 'Is' so much more... lively. I'm reasonably certain #60 was their first try to scrap out social protocols that Cyberlife deemed 'unnecessary'."

Gavin crossed his arms and shivered. "Are there-... Do you think you have forgotten brothers somewhere down here?"  
RK900 nodded instantly. "Most likely. But they would look a lot more like this", he said and pointed at one of the RK models that was only with a lot of imagination recognizable as humanoid. "I am a display model, so at least I 'should' be unique."

But as he said it, it wasn't difficult to hear his doubts. Why should these guys ever again trust a humans word, was what Gavin thought as he stood beside the dead android and imagined a world without Connor or the revolution. With just some hundred deviants who's pain never would have gotten listened to.

They would have never been worth more than the materials they were made of.

Gavins gaze followed RK900s curious stare as he stretched up to touch one of the prototypes.

"At least, except the one who got shut down, none of them is anything you could call sentient, even if you power them up ", said Kamski and used the chair as a step up to reach for one of the models that looked mostly complete in its make up. "A little help, love?", he said and Chloe stepped by instantly - she caught the falling body like it didn't weigh more than a bundle of sheets. "Sure thing", she stated with a smile. Kamski nodded. "RK900, would you kindly take the box?"

RK900 moved and took the heavy package in a fluid motion. Since he wasn't build as frail as Chloe was, it didn't course the same cognitive dissonance but made Gavin still think about his usual protective instincts. They seemed pretty much unneeded in face of... that.

He jumped as Kamskis hand laid down on his shoulder. "You alright?"  
Gavin didn't know what to say, because alright was a state of mind so fucking out of reach. So he just nodded. "Can you remember which floor Connor is on?"

Gavin was sure he could, so he went ahead on stiff legs and with a racing mind. "I let the staff know about this place. And my override codes", Kamski said casually.

"Should you even still have those...?", Gavin asked and furrowed his brows through the beginning of a severe headache. Kamski beside him just shrugged. "They are mine. Legally administrated. It's not my fault that the management never wiped the clearings."

Gavin snorted and knocked an elbow in his brothers side. "You still are an obnoxious dick, you know."

Beside him Kamski smiled his trademark trustworthy man of the year smile.

 

* * *

 

Kamskis override codes worked just as well on the scan-lockroom upstairs. The technicians stepped back in surprise and stared at the new man in their midst and even though there were no hushed whispers, many wildly blinking LEDs made clear that there was a lot of internal screaming going on.

Gavin let the diplomacy to RK900, Chloe and his brother as he slipped around the stunned staff to see if there was still time for them to do at least 'something'.

Connor was hooked up to what seemed to be at least a dozen bags of thirium and a monitor of his internal processes. It kind of looked like the task manager of Gavin's workstation. There was no need to observe a heartbeat or brainwaves. Gavin didn't understand any of this, so he concentrated on what he could see.

Connors non-functional eyes had been removed for further study, it seemed. They mostly cut him out of his shirt and jacket to get access to his vital components. The vicious cut in his flank, still sparking low electricity, was even more horrifying to see in the sterile white neon lights. The technicians had worked through the connections of Connors chest to drain the free flow of thirium and pull the machete out without further damage. A lot of clamps held blockages in place and his biocomponents still glew in aggressive red bursts. On a rolling side table the technicians had spread out a lot of different biocomponents in a try to find something compatible for Connors almost unique inner workings.

A hand reached into Gavins line of sight. RK900 lifted one of the displayed 'android eyes' and narrowed his own while he slowly shook his head in obvious distaste. "These won't do."

"But 'this' will", was their only warning before Kamski was suddenly there and slammed the dull android shell of the other RK800 unit onto the table, disregarding any of Connors faulty parts, or the incompatible ones, with just a swipe of his arm. They clattered to the floor like hail. Kamski didn't stop to think about what were essentially scattered android organs all over the tiles, but went straight to work like an excited kid on christmas with a Lego-Tech toolbox.

Connors steady breathing hitched as he was touched. Kamski carefully lifted his head to reach the panel in his nape to get a direct connection with his own assessment tools. Whatever he did, as he connected Connor to his tabled, it made the android twitch and weakly claw at the table with the only hand he still had left. "RK900, if you would be so kind", Kamski said while he scrolled through the damage reports and waved the other android to his aid.

RK900 stepped to the table and pressed a warm and helping hand down on Connors middle. His skin bled away in an instant, a connection was established, maybe even involuntary so, but suddenly RK900s eyes went wide with horror. "No!", he whispered, sounding almost haunted. And again right into Kamskis face as he turned. "No way, no!"

Kamski blinked in surprise. Maybe he still wasn't used for androids defying his orders. With glinting eyes full of burning curiosity he slightly leaned over the table. "No...?", he asked and funnily enough, RK900 answered only with a sharp and loud "NO!", in return.

RK900 pulled his hand back as if he had been burned. His shoulders lifted into a very human looking defensive reflex and it looked as if he had to blink utter trepidation out of his eyes before he could lift his head again to look into Kamskis. "He knows you want to replace him. He is terrified."

Gavin head shot around and he couldn't help the break in his already strained voice. "Replace-... Kamski, what are you even doing?!"

Kamski rolled his eyes in quite obvious annoyance. "Don't 'Kamski' me, dickhead", he almost whined. "I'll do no such thing, nobody will be 'replaced'!"

"Love", sounded suddenly the tired sigh of Chloe, as she stepped back into the room and rubbed two fingers over the bridge of her nose in a pretty clear gesture of irritation. "We already talked about this..."

The most hilarious thing was Kamskis answering pout. He lifted his hand to point at Chloe and RK900 and looked pointedly at Gavin as if he expected at least 'him' to understand. "Can you actually believe those guys?!", he hissed and Gavin never felt so related to him like in this very moment. But he still could only pull a face that betrayed his own confusion while he shrugged, because Gavin sure as shit didn't get it.

Kamski let his head fall back with a groan and rubbed with a flat hand over his mouth. "Connors skeleton is damaged, some of his most vital biocomponents got pierced. This concerns at least biocomponent #6467a, #90-z1 and #DD8574. His 'thirium pump' is damaged! Even if all that is replaced and worked around there is still a large possibility of permanent damage to his more delicate sensors and processors that 'can't' be easily repaired or replaced, while this thing", he stepped around and gave that empty shell a friendly pat to its shoulder. "Can just be rebooted after a data transfer and will work in utter perfection!"

Gavin blinked after some seconds which he absolutely needed to process. "So you 'are' about to replace him...?"

Kamski looked at him with a blank stare that made Gavin somehow feel like a traitor. "Nobody is 'replaced'. Connor will still be Connor, just happy and whole. It's the easiest and most efficient solution to this utter desaster."

Gavin needed again a moment to process before he slowly nodded. He guessed he understood from a technical standpoint. If you looked at Connor as if he was nothing but a broken machine - and if you had a different comprehension about when a 'copy' still counted as 'yourself'. "You are talking about your theoretical attempt at immortality", he murmured in understanding. He read that article a while ago, but couldn't remember even half of it. A lot of technical terms and bullshit that sounded important and gave way to a much greater discussion about ethics in human enhancements, prosthetic and life support.

"You wouldn't feel abandoned if someone did this to you...?", he asked and couldn't help the frown that darkened his eyes. Kamski looked at him and shrugged. That, somehow, was the most horrifying thing Gavin had ever seen.

"If I was in a situation where I was about to die and there was an easy solution to preserve my person and memory, I wouldn't say no", Kamski gestured widely as he talked. "It's the same as the thought behind instantaneous transporter technology."

Yeah, Gavin got that. It wasn't hard to follow. But there was also a thing that itched under his skin and made Gavin suddenly feel quite bitter. He knew it wasn't Elijahs fault, nothing of this. But he couldn't help the sharp edge in his voice as he spoke up again. "Through all these years, through all the abuse you probably took, there was never someone who made you feel like you were easily replaceable, was there?"

Nervous Gavin moved his jaw as he shifted his gaze away. It wasn't possible to fight about moral viewpoints as long as Connor was laid out on that table, blind and deaf and scared utterly shitless. "Imagine to be one of them. To be told that you are worth so little that another could stand up anytime and take your place", he murmured and didn't talk to anyone in particular, because this very moment he looked at Connor and saw the frightened and burned out shitbag he himself had been just some years ago. "Not only whole, not only better and more efficient, but also with the same face, the same voice, the same memories-... A thief. A thief that doesn't leave anything back for only you to hold onto. And you are the one forgotten and left behind to die alone."

The more he talked the tighter felt his chest and throat. It wouldn't have been possible to replace Gavin with a cloned copy of himself, back in the days. But even just another, stronger and more vicious, shithead would have been enough.

If Gavin had been pushed away by the only people who had 'needed' him, for just another broken guy, just discarded, he might hadn't survived as long as he had. He might had tried to kill himself a hell of a lot sooner.  
"You won't do this. Not to Connor and not to others like him", he said sharply as he lifted his head again. "And since when are you one for the 'easiest' solution, anyway?!"

Kamski assessed him again with a drilling stare that made Gavin feel even more uncomfortable than RK900s most obvious scans. What surprised him was the small crooked smile in the corner of his brothers mouth. "You always were kind of an emo-boy", he said. Gavin wrinkled his nose in a snarl. "Just get your ass to work, dipshit."

Kamski rolled his eyes, but chuckled lightheartedly while he showed his wide trademark Mr. Trustworthy smile. "Sure do, Dickbag."

And he went. Efficiently and clean.

Kamski worked Connor apart, part for part, and opened the other body to take everything that was needed to correct the errors of his hardware.

In the first hour of the 'operation' Gavin felt mind-numbing relief. In the second hour, he felt pure hatred on behalf of that abandoned RK800 unit, alone and forgotten with only some corpses for company in a abandoned basement. The third hour went by as he fell asleep in a chair, out of the way of his brother and his helping hands.

As he twitched awake, he decided to go out and get them something for a break or at least a damn coffee to keep them both alert and working. Gavin came back with a thermos bottle from the one still used kitchen at the ground floor.

As Kamski asked him to, he started to monitor Connors processes and observed the installation of running patchwork. Connor gasped faintly as his visual sensors came back online, but he still didn't talk. Kamski identified his silence as a problem with his voice box. It wasn't in dire need of replacement but still damaged enough to make things quite uncomfortable. A lot of fine-tuning had to be done before Connor was able again to croak some words.

"I-... It -t -t hurts -s -s", was the first and only thing he said for a while, his usually so warm and friendly voice distorted by static and odd sounding stutters. Gavin clapped his hand down onto his good shoulder and held Connors hand in a tight grip while he followed a new rise of Connors core temperature on screen. "It's alright, buddy. Just hang in there, we've got your back here", he murmured mindlessly and jumped in alarm as the observation monitor blinked with a new error message. Kamski cursed and dove again up to his elbows into Connors chest.

Some time later Gavin changed places with RK900 who helped to calm down Connors way too high stress levels. This all had to be the most scaring experience related to androids that Gavin ever had. The realization that Connor was indeed in horrible pain, but couldn't be sedated because an artificial body just didn't work that way, made Gavin's stomach churn every time Connor uttered for help.

Since Connor was so to speak already 'booted in safe mode' to control any possibly occurring data losses, it wasn't feasible to power him down without risking to kill him with it. As Kamski stated it, after a faulty reboot he may not wake up the same person. Something about just one falsely placed semicolon that could crash a system of a million lines.

All about this operation was a mindnumbingly horrible experience that went on for way too many hours into the next day.

Gavin wasn't even the one in pain, but he still felt his batteries draining. He never went well with being somehow the emotional support. Gavin wanted to sit down, just for some precious seconds. To close his eyes till he felt at least slightly like a human being again.

He was woken by a soft giggle and a warm press of lips to his cheek. "Ah, there you are...!", murmured Chloe with a wide smile and thankfully stood in line of the sunlight that set the silver window blinds ablaze in a golden hue. The weather was perfect. The sky was open, wide and blue, the sun was shining on a crisp cold winter morning and Gavin wanted to die.

The headache that shot right through his mushy brain made his eyes water. "Is it done... ?", He rasped and sat up with a low groan and quivering cold muscles. There was an additional jacket around his shoulders that smelled like neutral detergent and silicone. He didn't need to see its standardized Cyberlife colors and lettering to know where it came from. Gavin huffed and let his heavy head fall right into his hands because there was no way all of this horrifying crap could have happened in just one shitty late night shift.

Chloes soft laugh was lovely, clear like a bell and so very happy. A dream girlfriend come to life. "It is! Mostly, anyway. Connor is a lot better now."

Gavin tilted his body to look over her shoulder. The equipment was in his line of sight, but he saw and heard the movement behind it. Kamski was still at it with a lot low mumbles and murmurs. But someone was missing from the scene.

The exact moment his sluggish brain was done with its round of Jeopardy! music, Chloes pink lips stretched into a wide feline grin. Even though Gavin grumbled his open distaste, she lifted a stretched finger and poked his somehow flushed cheek. "He went out to get more coffee the moment he noticed you waking up. He seems to like you very much!", she said with that playful grin and Gavin tried his best to avoid her gaze.

"An' you seem to have a thing for my dipshit baby brother. So you really shouldn't be the one who alleges RK900 of bad taste", Gavin mumbled irritably and got finally onto his feet. Chloe curled her delicate fingers around his arm and leaned warmly into him. "Don't be mean", she said with a smile and tilted her head against his shoulder. Which looked weird because she was still a bit taller than him. "He still has his qualities!"

Gavin sighed exasperated and rubbed a hand over his face. It felt unusual prickly. He could feel muscle groups in his shoulders and back that he didn't even know existed before. Giggling Chloe stayed at his side as Gavin dragged his feet back to the table, where Kamski was still working.

Gavins brain needed a blink or two to catch onto the fact that this naked doll-like android that sat upright on the table wasn't the dummy Kamski dragged out of the basement. Even though there were almost no human characteristics to his face, Connor looked tired as all hell and ready for murder. Even like this he was so very expressive.

"Great, great, keep your arm up", Kamski murmured as he worked with a heating pen around the tears in Connors outer shell to mend the seams together again. Heat reactive plastics were a blast like that. "Keep your patience, we are almost done here."

Connor looked good for an android who almost got chopped in half the other evening. Even though there were also these little nicks and cuts on his face, one over his right brow, another at his left cheekbone, already fixed and held together by a thin stripe of white. It almost looked like scar tissue.

Gavin never saw an android, an awake and moving one, in its natural state. No skin, no cloths. It was quite unnerving how human and alien they looked at the same time. Plastered with identifiers and serial numbers like some kind of branded animal.

Gavin cleared his throat awkwardly because there was no way of hiding his curious stares. "Hey, defective-detective", he rasped in some kind of greeting with something that could have been a smile if he had invested just a tat more energy. "You fine to go?"

Connors eyes shifted and his tired stare almost made Gavin shiver. He looked worn out and at the same time so very angry. "There's no sensation in my left hand", he said, paper dry. He didn't quite sound like himself. "My chest feels hot. And tight. I'm not sure my processors run at optimum speed and capacity. Is that what 'pain' feels like for you?"

Gavin swallowed. He hoped to the gods there wasn't something like an android with chronic pains or lasting disabilities. "Dunno", he murmured. "But it doesn't have to, to be real. We will get you up and running. Come on, Anderson is waiting."

The slow curl of Connors lips had to be enough for now.

 

* * *

 

They met RK900 on his way back up to the tech labor. The coffee he held was instantly given into Gavin's hands and with a soundless sigh Gavin rolled his shoulders out of that Jacket and then pressed it maybe a little bit too hard into RK900s chest. Gavin didn't want to look into his damn eyes right now.

"I appreciate your help, detective", said Connor as they reached the entrance hall and Gavin wanted to curl up under a rock and die. "Sure, whatever", he said and downed that damn still way too hot coffee before he turned on his heel, good to go.

Suddenly there sounded a sharp shout behind him. "No! No, you stay right there, Gavin!"

Gavin froze and groaned silently as Kamskis hand came down onto his shoulder and turned him back around with the momentum of his movement. A pointed manicured index finger almost touched to his nose. "First", Kamski drawled with sharply narrowed eyes. "You owe me one. Second, 'Christmas'!"

Gavin blinked. First at that finger in his face that almost made him cross-eyed, than at his brother and just couldn't believe what he had heard. "We don't speak for twenty years and somehow 'now' you decide to push for 'family obligations'...?!"

Kamski had the utter audacity to just shrug in answer. Androids seemed to be honestly made in his image.

"Yep", Kamski said with an obnoxious loud plop and Gavin felt the blood leaving his face in a burst of hard hammering anger. The rush of it came so suddenly, his rising blood pressure almost made him blind with it. "First we don't talk for 'twenty years'", he spat. "Then you send me a damn android cat to 'spy' on me and now you somehow want to-... "

Gavin felt his vision turn to a pulsing red, the empty paper cup slid through his ice cold fingers and he took a gasping breath as his chest sized shut.

Suddenly RK900 materialized right beside him. An arm around his waist stopped Gavin's shaking legs from giving out under him while his other hand pressed down on his abdomen. "Close your eyes, detective", he said in his neutral negotiator voice that never failed to calm Gavin down. "Breathe."

And Gavin did. Pressed his eyes closed and opened his mouth wide to get enough oxygen to make his sides stop hurting. He felt his stomach drop because this was... just too embarrassingly personal. To wide in the open. People were staring. 'Kamski' was staring.

Since Gavin wasn't able to right now, RK900 was the one who got into detective mode and went on with the questions. "Why did you send the cat, Mr. Kamski?"

Kamskis look of confused concern turned straight to bewilderment as he weakly pointed again at Gavin. "Because my dear brother wanted one. What are you talking about? It's not a 'spy'."

Gavin was tired of it all and just had enough for one day. "It's used as a spying tool, that's what it is!", he sneered and fiddled with his pocket until he finally got his phone out and pressed it almost right into Kamskis face. Kamski blinked disconcerted into their faces and than rather curious at the phone. He took it and let his thump switched through the opened application, followed the transferred data. His brows lowered. "That's not its purpose at all. "

"You don't say?!", Gavin rasped and Kamski shot him a dirty look. He went further back and further and further-...

"Step counts, vitals, seconds between movements and locations... huh", he murmured and furrowed his brows. His free hand rubbed over his slightly opened mouth in deep thought. "This is one of mine. I know its design. There is nothing in its code, that-... "

Suddenly Kamski stopped. His brows lifted almost to his hairline. His eyes snapped up to Gavin's. "Is it a deviant?"

Gavin blinked and pulled a face. "Most likely... I guess. "

Kamskis face contorted as if he bit into an overripe lemon. "You 'guess', it is?!"

Gavin groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. "It's a damn 'cat', asshat!", he growled as he looked up again. "It behaves like one! It doesn't have a name and even if it did, it doesn't listen to me anyway!"

Kamski snorted and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, deviant. Surely it is. You know how some deviants get obsessed with random little objectives? Feed birds, draw repeating pictures", his eyes snapped just a blink long to RK900. "Fall into repeating emotional patterns?"

"You mean when just woken up?", asked Gavin. Kamski smiled. "Not only then, but it explains this. It seems your little companion just loves... to count things."

Gavin frowned. "To... count-... Okay, repeating patterns and stuff, but why would it upload that shit?!"

It wasn't important information, or required for other functions. It was just... weird.

Kamski didn't have the answer for that one. He just shrugged again. "Ask it", he said. "For the cat it maybe feels quite important. These models aren't designed for much memory space. Maybe its scared to forget things?"

Gavins racing thoughts came to a sudden halt. Scared to forget. Limited memory space. Somehow now... this obsession made at least a bit more sense. So the cats behavior wasn't necessarily written in its coding at all, but through deviancy and the sudden connection to a network it found a way to work around its own limitations. It was an adaption, not a symptom.

Gavin exhaled and felt a weight roll of his shoulders that he hadn't even known to be there. His thoughts were buzzing. He only new one thing. He might never again delete any picture or message he found in that app ever again. Damn that thing straight to hell.

"And Gavin?"

Gavin looked up. Kamskis smile was wide and warm - and made him therefore instantly uncomfortable. "I think I understand it."

Gavin was pretty sure they bypassed some greater context here, so he just asked daftly: "Understand what?"

Kamski smiled and the glint in his eyes held some kind of apology, even through he didn't state it aloud. "Your and their fear of replacement. You were right. It doesn't feel quite... 'real' to me. Fear of replacement was never something I had to bother with. "

Never feeling interchangeable in your Job or as a person. Gavin almost fell down into a well of vicious envy. He swallowed his instinct to shut his estranged brother down and asked instead: "But you get it now? "

Kamski nodded. "I do. I had a whole night with a- I had hours to think about it."  
He smiled way too happy and kind of excited. "It's the Theseus Ship Argument. How many planks can you replace of your ship, until it stops being the ship you started your journey with. It's a deeply philosophical question."

Kamski frowned and lifted his hand in a dismissive wave. "Even though I still think with humans, this thought experiment doesn't make much sense. All eight to nine years our ship changes its planks completely, every cell will be replaced anyway. But with androids...?"

His eyes turned dark and narrowed down as he tipped with his stretched index finger against his cheek. Gavin groaned and wrinkled his nose. "Kamski... "

"No, I get it, really", was his brothers instantly shot out response, wide eyed and certain. "I guess being replaced is a deep-seated fear for a lot of people. I get it... - even though I still think it's quite stup-..."

Suddenly a long and elegant index finger stretched under Kamskis jaw and pressed it shut with just a little bit of force. His teeth clicked noticeably together. Chloe leaned into the conversation from the side. "Sorry guys. My 'Elijah says inconsiderate things again' senses were tingling. "

Kamski slowly crossed his arms and looked so. utterly. scandalized. Gavin suppressed a sudden urge to laugh into his face. Instead he took a deep breath, swallowed, and closed his eyes.

"Okay", he murmured. "Alright. Now let's go."  
Gavin elbowed RK900 slightly into his chest as he turned. "This place gives me the creeps. Connor?!"

"Right behind you! "

"Good man. Now let's fuck off, I'm tired of-... "

"Gavin?!", Gavin froze two steps ahead and growled impatiently before he turned around on his heels. "Fucking what?!"

Elijah just looked him dead in the eyes as he snapped the fingers of his right hand in his direction to one obnoxious finger gun. "'Christmas'!", he said, sharply.

Gavin's tired and angry outburst kind of melted away. He stared at his brother and searched in his eyes for the joke. There was none. Kamski was fucking serious about this. Gavin felt that hitching burn in his chest even before his face heated up. "I'm-... Okay... Okay."

Kamski nodded with a satisfied smile. His sharp eyes changed their target. "RK900? One word please?"

RK900 seemed surprised. He looked at Gavin for guidance, but he just shrugged and patted his shoulder as he went by. "We wait for you outside. Don't let him steal your android-kidneys or something."

"Please, Gavin", drawled his little shithead brother. "If I would want something, I would go straight for the brain."

Gavin snorted and was quick on his feet to finally get the fuck out.

His car still stood unmoved on the driveway. At least the dribbles of blueblood everywhere weren't visible anymore.

As Gavin slammed the car door shut and it was finally silent he took a deep breath and held it before he exhaled in a shudder. It almost turned his bones to mush. "Hey, Connor."  
The Android on the rear seat right behind him gave a little hum as acknowledgement. His voice still sounded as if it hurt to use it. "I saw your most precious parts. We really should be best friends by now."

Connor sounded as tired as Gavin felt. "Go fuck yourself, Detective."  
Gavin chuckled and stretched him a tired thump up without investing the energy to even turn around.

Not ten minutes later RK900 was with them again and took the drivers seat. "Mr. Kamski will search for activation logs to help you re-create your standard calibrations", he said as he turned the vehicle. "I can help, too. When we get to our destination, I will compile you a re-creation of audio samples, so you can re-calibrate your vocal processor."

Connor hummed lowly and somehow Gavin knew this vocal conversation was mostly to his benefit. Why ever they thought it was necessary to include him at all.

"No. Don't bother", Connor said in that ruined voice that sounded rather husky, somehow. "I guess... I like it. In a way. We won't share an audio profile anymor-..."

If it had been Gavin who was driving, his foot might have stomped down onto the brake in reflex. He couldn't help but shoot around while Connor and RK900 held a civil conversation about copied voice samples and similar facial features. Gavin wasn't sure why, but that bullshit made his hackles rise.

"What the fuck are you two even talking about?", he interrupted prickly. "You sound and look absolutely nothing alike. I guess people would assume you are brothers, but that's it with the similarities."

Connor looked pretty much amused, somehow. RK900 didn't take his eyes away from the road, but still smiled widely. "We share the same facial features with minimal differences, but we 'do' share the exact same vocal samples. Our voices are exactly the same, detective", he said.

Gavin stared, utterly flabbergasted and kind of mortified for some reason. He couldn't even comprehend. "No", he said with conviction and made Connor laugh. "Rather!", the android said.

Gavin pulled a face in utter distaste. "You guys are just shitting me. You never sounded alike at all."

The RK brothers looked happy enough with the prospect of letting Gavin keep his one sacred illusion.

 

* * *

 

As they finally reached the hospital Connor was so out of it, fiddling, twitching and tapping his foot, that Gavin wanted to throttle him. He shot out of the car as soon as it was parked and off he was, pains and lasting damage or not.

"Look at him go", Gavin grumbled as he got out. "Like a Duracell Bunny."

RK900 hummed lowly and followed close up. "Don't be a dick, detective. Lieutenant Anderson could have died."

So could have Connor, Gavin thought and tried to imagine a precinct without them. He didn't particularly like either of them, maybe there was just too much emotional baggage between them, but they were the closest to the label of 'friend' that Gavin had. Aside from that dumbass walking besides him now, of course. "I guess. Gets you thinking, huh?"

Gavin loathed hospitals. The lights burned in his eyes and it reeked of antiseptics and illness. With a queasy feeling in his stomach he patted RK900s shoulder and send him off ahead, while Gavin went to search for the nearest coffee machine first.

He couldn't stomach the narrowed space of an elevator again today, so he sipped at his paper cup and took the stairs and just used this rare moment of silence to help his still very much racing thoughts to settle down. As far as his sluggish mind still aloud him for, at least.

Why did last night get him almost into a state of frozen shock, when he had already seen more gruesome shit on a Tuesday afternoon? A bashed in android never had gotten to him before, because it was just this abstract concept of life, so extremely different from a brutally murdered human. Blueblood never before had made him uneasy or afraid.

He had been numb and shivering before he even knew what had happened. He only had seen Connor lay there and assumed he was already dead. He guessed. Gavin couldn't even remember. He frowned and tried to recall his steps at the scene.

Of course it never would be an okay sight to find one of his closest colleagues attacked and maybe even dying. But it never had affected him so thoroughly like last night. It never before had frozen Gavin up like that.

With a thoughtful hum he hieved himself up the stairs and found himself shortly later in the corridor to Lieutenant Anderson's room. The door was closed.

Fowler greeted him with a strong handshake and Collins tipped his hat from his place by the door. RK900 looked a bit too concerned for Gavin's taste so he elbowed him again. "What's up. The old drunkard dead?"

Captain Fowler furrowed his brows and slowly crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Hard to kill", he said while his gaze wandered back to the door. "But high as a kite on painkillers right now. A lot of loopy hugs and 'love you's"

The captains sharp stare shot back to Gavin and the right corner of his mouth lifted in derision. "Should go in there, you look like you could need some. "

The muscles in Gavin's back went taut and his nose wrinkled in a sneer. But he made the smarter decision to swallow his answering 'fuck you' with the last gulp of his coffee.

"Is he alright, then?", he asked and crushed the paper cup in his hand. Fowler nodded. "For now. Thank god that old bastard is. Mostly, anyway. Started bawling as soon as Connor went in there. "

Gavin laughed and shook his head, because he sure as shit couldn't even imagine that. "What an old loser. Did someone already take the statements?"

Fowler snorted. "With Hank almost choking on codeine and Connor disassembled where the fuck ever? Hell, no. "

"Well! ", Gavin clapped his hands together and rubbed them enthusiastically. "I volunteer as a tribute! Get this shit rolling, I've got some good fucking questions."

He didn't wait for RK900 and ignored Collins grumble as he opened the door. Gavin was in a mood bad enough to annoy the fuck out of that old drunkard.  
\- But he wasn't even three steps inside, the door falling heavily shut behind him, as he froze for a second time in just some hours apart.

Lieutenant Anderson had a room to himself as the other two beds were empty right now. His was the one next to the windows. Connor stood between his bed and said windows, not a spec of distance between them - because Hank fucking Anderson had a shaky sobbing fit into his favorite androids stomach. Connor had curled his arms delicately around his shoulders and head while his cheek rested on Anderson's head. He was murmuring low nonsense that Gavin couldn't understand through the activated noise cancelling.

But Gavin knew what he saw. Connor answered Anderson's hitching low sobs with deep murmurs of affection and a slowly swaying body. Just to make the old man feel that he was still moving and indeed alive.

It was Connors sharp stare that made Gavin's lungs burn and his face flush in splotchy red. His skin prickled in pure embarrassment.

He opened his mouth - but Connor, almost imperceptibly, shook his head. Slowly he lifted a hand behind the Lieutenants back and stretched his index finger over his lips.

Gavin closed his mouth with a noticeable click.

Connor tilted his head down again and closed his eyes. In this moment Gavin was basically shut out of a world he had no right to intrude in, anyway.

With nervously twitching fingers he backed away, slow and silent. As he stepped outside again Collins gave him a snort, while Captain Fowler lifted his brows in annoyance. "Wasn't as fun as you thought, huh?", the old mind reader bitched right away. Gavin pressed his lips together to a fine line and shook his head.

Heavily he let himself fall back against the wall and rubbed his fingers over his closed eyes. RK900 leaned beside him. Their shoulders touched, but barely.

Fowler and Collins conversed in lowered voices about the final episode of some mindless TV program while they stood there, waiting. Tina, who only got in one hour ago, shot Gavin some texts and asked for status updates. Gavin flicked tiredly through his phone as he got another message.

> **\- Lieutenant Man Awesome -** 'still waiting, badger. You never were a fucking Coward. Get your shite arse moving!'

Gavin stared in frozen shock.

Because through all the horrible shit that came down all at once last night, he honest to the gods forgot about that text.

He completely forgot, because his mind had been nothing but frozen useless matter.

Now, blood shot hot and fast into his head and made his ears ring with static noise, while his chest went tight and his heart was 'burning'. A low rumble escaped his sore throat and his thumb pressed hard enough down onto the touch screen to crack a spiderweb into its glass.

RK900s stretched out hand came to late, because Gavin already turned and ran as fast as he could muster without breaking his bones as he more than anything jumped down the stairs. He couldn't hear, he couldn't see.

As he came back to himself his hand rested on the roof of his car while his lungs and sides burned like he was dying.

He knew where he had to go. Where he had to be right now. Gavin slammed the car door shut right as it opened on the other side. "Detective", RK900 said with a face hard as stone. Gavin's fists slammed down onto the steering wheel.

"Get out!!"

RK900 showed him no mind. He didn't react, didn't even fucking blink. "No", he simply said. Gavin pressed his head down onto the wheel and tore at his hair in a try to get some damn useless feeling back into his clammy skin. "I said", he rasped and curled his stiff fingers into fists as his stomach took a roll. "Get. The fuck. Out. Tin Can!"

Now RK900 turned his head to actually look at him. He stared eerily, scanned him surely. "I will not", he said with purpose.

Gavin wanted to close his hands around RK900s throat and squeeze - maybe he wouldn't feel like a raging dumpster fire anymore if he deluded himself hard enough to think he had some control left over his fucked up life. He usually did this with a balled fist and another blighter who itched for a brawl. Gavin's following sigh deflated him. He didn't want to lash out at that useless bolt brain. Not really at least. His head fell down again against the wheel while an aggressive but so very tired hum tore out of his throat. "You, damn fuckin-... You'can't' just-..."

"I'm called 'Tin Can', not 'Tin Cannot'", said the android, his voice utterly flat.

Gavin gasped through a silent scream and finally lifted his head to stare him down out of wild and burning eyes. "From all the times to develop an utter shit sense of humor, you actually choose fucking now?!"

"Gavin. "

Gavin's wildly hammering heart seemed to stop. His throat closed up as RK900 spoke softly in that low and caring tone of voice he only used on 'him'. Almost as if he thought Gavin wore a label somewhere on his body that read 'handle with care', if not 'attention: health hazard'.

RK900s face didn't twitch even one artificial muscle. "I won't go", he said, his words final. "And I won't let you run off on your own, either."

Gavin needed a break before he did or said something he would sorely regret. Heavily he leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and held it until his chest started hurting. As he exhaled, his sudden fiery anger burned itself out to utter numbness. "'So you noticed?'", he mimicked RK900 rather defeatedly.

RK900 watched him intently. "Network", he said, clipped.

Gavin wrinkled his nose. "And I guess Anderson's little photo album made a nice impression as well?", he muttered, his voice full of stale old bitterness. RK900 didn't move, seemed to assess his pre-construction software to find something 'sensitive' to say. Gavin couldn't help the low snort that escaped him because of the Androids wildly flashing LED.

"The photos were... Informative. But so are your observable symptoms of long term red ice consumption and the gaps in your DPD qualification profile, as well as your scars and almost physically aggressive response to the smell and sight of recreational drugs."

So, he went with the 'honest' profile settings then?

Gavin sighed and felt hollowed out to his bones. "Smartarse", he huffed, tiredly. "You are a fucking menace."

RK900 continued to watch him and Gavin rubbed both of his hands roughly over his grey face. "Okay... ", he muttered and again as he leaned back into the seat to tip his head into his nape. "Okay."

So he wouldn't wander alone into the lions den then? He guessed it may as well be better that way. Or maybe not, if his old contact wasn't as eager and happy to see Gavin as his texts suggested.

Exhausted he tilted his head to RK900 and looked him over with narrowed eyes. Discontented Gavin noted the still wildly blinking LED, the conspicuous black and white Cyberlife jacket he never got rid of, his face with its resemblance to Connor who almost got destroyed-... 'killed' by Gavin's old 'associates', who might even recognize the android because of that...

No, this wouldn't do at all.

In almost stiffly robotic movement Gavin leaned over to open the glove box and rummaged through all the old shit he forgot in there over the years. Between some old and long gone empty cigarette boxes he found a crumpled warning west, some gum and a steel grey woolen beanie.

Well it was a start at least. "Pull that over your head", he huffed and pressed the wool roughly into RK900s chest. "Don't want them to spot your little light show right away. And for the love of god, get finally rid of that fucked up jacket."

RK900 took the beanie and instantly started to roll his shoulders out of his uniform. "You don't like it...?", he asked kind of hesitantly and to Gavins surprise sounded almost dejected. Gavin again turned around to actually look at him.

There just was something about his uniform that got to him, at least in situations like this, as rarely as they happened. "I'm not a fashion advisor", he said with a shrug. "If you like the color scheme, keep it that way. But you aren't 'theirs' anymore. There is no fucking reason for you to keep your identifiers - except maybe as a fucked up kind of warning label."

RK900s awkward smile did things to Gavin he just didn't want to think about right now.

"Guess your window of opportunity is closed now", he muttered darkly as he started his car. "Your name is 'Nines' now, got it?"

The android imitated a low snort. "Nines O'Zero, detective?"

Oh! So he actually listened last time?

Gavin bit down on a rather daft smile. "Can't get a drivers license without a surname, I suppose."

Like told, 'Nines' pulled up the beanie and hid his LED underneath. "I guess its a lot more fitting than 'Richard Kingsley'."

But even through RK900s mumbled complains, Gavin had this underlying feeling, that the android just hadn't decided on a name for himself yet, because he wasn't able to. Not as if it wasn't in his powers to make conscious decisions. But he reminded Gavin a lot of a person used to a strict dietary routine, suddenly alone at a supermarket where the hundreds of choices where somehow only uncomfortably overwhelming. Gavin gave him now an easy out of that. "Nines it is, for now, then. Tell me if you find a better one."

RK900 shook his head right away. "There is no need."

Gavin opened his mouth to say that a change of names didn't have to be 'necessary', but got distracted as a kind of heavy weight fell into the foot well. Gavin blinked down in surprise. It was his old pocket knife. A butterfly one that Gavin used to fiddle with all the time when he had been still aloud to. He forgot he still had it somewhere.

As he picked it up he felt that familiar weight and pull. Easily he snapped it through his fingers, testing his memory. The knife was almost completely blunt now anyway, but overtly chipped with rust and some grime. A nick would mean a drastic need for another tetanus shot, for sure. "Hey", Gavin murmured. "You can do this better than me, can't you?"

RK900, Nines, had tilted his head instantly in silent observation as soon as Gavin had picked up the knife. He didn't say a thing but caught it readily as Gavin flung it his way. He tested the weight, the range of movement and then started to fiddle and fling it. First a little cautions, but he fastly gained his confidence in speed. Just as expertly as Connor with his damn coin.

"Yeah, thought so", Gavin sneered and finally pulled out of the parking lot. "You are with me. You are bored out of your fucking mind. Act like it. You will not talk to any of them. Understood?!"

RK900s nod was equally stiff and obedient.

Gavin stomped down on the accelerator. "Nice."

 

* * *

 

Gavin still remembered the south-end as if he never had left it. He was seldom down here nowadays. He tried to evade drug busts and dead fixers like the plague as far his job allowed for it.

Charlston House was still one of the known and used drug dens. It had been Joel's, once upon a time. Not really, not bought or on paper. It was just this rotting old house nobody cared for, like thousands around Detroit that hadn't been wrecked by the still on-going neighborhood rebuilding programs.

Charlston House had once been Gavin's home.

He just stood outside and looked up the ruined facade and remembered the deep of night, dozens of flashing lights and funny guys in body suits. There, in the room behind the second window from the left, Bigby had shot Joel Kelley's guts all over the carpet with the gun Gavin had once stolen from his own father. Shot him in the stomach because he wanted Joel to hurt and cry as he died.

Gavin twitched out of his musings as RK900 stepped beside him. He didn't say anything, only twirled the knife silently as ordered - but watched Gavin sharply as a hawk.

All Gavin wanted right now was to flee and crawl back into the isolated space of his home, hide under some warm and heavy blankets and forget that a huge part of his life had ever happened.

It seemed like RK900 wanted to be the voice of reason again. "You shouldn't do this, detective. We should call it in", he murmured as he slightly leaned over.

Gavin's shoulders dropped as he sighed in defeat.  
"Shut it", he roughly bit back. "'This' is what it means to have personal business. Sometimes you have to do things you don't like."

RK900 tipped his elbow to Gavin's side and lifted his brows. "Personal business while you are still on the clock?"

Gavin hummed lowly. "Shut the fuck up, you are just no fun."

Like all of this whole 'personal business' wasn't, in the least.

Gavin closed his eyes and took a deep shoulders lifting breath. "Any androids in there?"

If Gavin's old buddies stored a military train wreck somewhere inside there, it shouldn't be too hard to spot, should it?

RK900 face did this blank thing that signaled a lot of android stuff was going on behind his narrowing eyes. "Not to my knowledge", he said deliberately slow. "But most GI models come with signal jammers that pull them out of the network and make them impossible to detect through frequency scans alone. "

Gavin couldn't help the deep and angry groan. "An autonomous killing machine capable of flight mode. Brilliant. Utterly brilliant. What else can these guys do besides making themselves practically invisible?!"

RK900s lifted his brows while his lips thinned out to a fine line. "GI models, as a standard measure, have a reinforced skeletal structure that is almost impossible to break or bent. Their shell is equally enhanced and mostly bullet-proof to sub-caliber weapon damage. They can carry six times their own body weight to ensure they can work around failing equipment and move their troops bases on their own if needed. The newest models are equipped with a dozen different types of threat assessment software and are able of tactical planning and crowd control. They can, not unlike Connor and me, pre-construct on-going events and choose the best outcome out of millions of calculations. They are, as of now, the most powerful machines - people - Cyberlife ever created."

This time Gavin let him do his little advertisement mode to the end and even listened intently. He let out a low whistle. "If that doesn't sound like a terminator, I fucking dunno what does..."

Whoever was responsible for the automation of the military should be put right under a guillotine. If there would have ever happened a more skynet like revolution, well fuck all of humanity. These guys made the shit real. But there was also a little detail itching away at Gavin's adrenaline and caffeine addled brain. "When you say 'most powerful', do you actually include yourself? Thought 'you' were the toughest guy out there?"

RK900, to Gavin's dark amusement, looked quite displeased as his sharp gaze changed its target again right back to him. "In the sense of my abilities to create smooth and mostly friction less work environments with humans and use all my capabilities to an advantage in standard police procedure, as well as high speed chases and hostage negotiations, 'I am' the most powerful and advanced model. My processing power should be roughly the same as the GI-M300. But I was never build to stop bullets, survive contact mines or break through curtain fire while carrying human combatants to safety. My protocols for threat assessment, combat and self defense should be the same, as well. But military models tend to be a lot more resilient than any other kind."

Gavin waved RK900s badly hidden nervousness away with a gesture of unhidden disinterest. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. They are kind of an IPhone, you're an Android."

RK900s 'let me google that first'-face always made even the bad shit a lot more entertaining. "In a way", he finally said.

Gavin couldn't help his escaping snort and pressed a hand down on RK900s shoulder. "You are ridiculous."

But his low amusement fell flat as his own gaze wandered back to the looming dark house in front of them. Gavin swallowed. "I don't want you to talk to anyone in there. It always means bad business. Fuck, I don't even want them to look at you."

For him it now seemed rather clear that the thief of Anderson's phone had it somehow in for the android anyway. Maybe they had thought Connor was his, because they had their heads too far up their arse to spot that the RK brothers were indeed two different people. Gavin narrowed his eyes while his upper lip twitched to a snarl. "Just stay behind me, got it?"

A miracle happened because RK900 didn't even attempt to fight him on this. Instead he nodded sharply. "Got it."

Again Gavin took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders back. "Okay then... "

In fast steps, before he could start to think up reasons why he shouldn't, Gavin went up the stairs - and rammed the ruined wooden door open with his shoulder.

The sun shone through the boarded windows and illuminated the haze of dust in pretty glittering strokes of sunlight. Whoever of the guys stole Anderson's phone, he couldn't be a real smarty if he thought he could pull this shit off in brought daylight.

Like the little fuckers who jumped out of that ruined couch and shrieked like little piggies as Gavin marched just in there and grabbed the nearest one by his collar. The guy Gavin had on his hands now was just a boy. A 'boy' for fucks sake. Not even close to legal age. Like at least two of the other five that scattered around in the once so nicely furnished living-room.

Gavin lifted the lanky body by the collar like a doll and pressed him into the nearest wall. "You will tell me right now where I can find Joseph fucking Norris, or I swear I will make you listen to some very compelling reasons for why. you fucking. should."

The boy stared pale, wide eyed and utterly terrified up in his scarred face and his visible fear made Gavin so angry, he just wanted to feel the world burn under his fingertips. Stiffly he sat the boy down before he leaned into the wall right beside him and clapped a hand down onto his shoulder. The boy twitched in frozen shock. "What's your name, kid. "

The kid shivered. "Uh... Um... A- Adam...?"

He didn't sound quite sure. Gavin indulged him, because even if he lied right now, it didn't really matter. "Okay. 'Adam'. See that guy?", Gavin drawled and flicked against his nose before he pointed at RK900 who stood on the ruined carpet and looked around in mild interest while he still twirled the knife between his fingers. A lot slower now, as if distracted.

The boys eyes followed Gavin's hint - whereupon his face turned pale and grey as ash.

Gavin narrowed his eyes and just thought 'bingo'. That little shit had been there. "That's my bestie Nines", Gavin drawled. Three of the other guys had now scattered around his partner and ran, while the one who stayed stomped noisily up the stairs to get away from them. Gavin concentrated on the kid right at his hand. "He's a good fellow - great fellow, indeed. You know what he 'also' is?"

Adams eyes were wide and fearful as his gaze shifted in rapid speed between Gavin and RK900 in a try to hold them both in focus at the same time. "I-... Uh... No...?"

Gavin smiled his nicest 'good neighbor and friendly colleague' smile as he tipped his index finger under Adams chin to pull his attention around and back to him. "He is 'my' little bitch", he drawled. Adam twitched in utter terror as Gavin went again for his collar. "AND YOU, YOUR MUM AND EVEN YOUR DAMN FUCKING SISTER WILL BE TOO, IF YOU DON'T FUCKING SPILL RIGHT NOW!!"

Adam shivered and shuddered in his grip as his lower lip started to wobble. "I- I'm sorry, I don't-... I don't know who-..."

Adam was saved by the horrible invasive acoustics of that ramshackle hut and Gavin's fastly shifting attention as a bellowing voice called him from below. "BADGER, YOU EMBARRASSING MONGREL, GET YOUR BITCHASS UGLY FACE DOWN HERE!!"

Gavin suddenly snapped into some kind of head space like a well trained dog. He remembered it all so sharply as if he never had left this fucking place. He could still taste the pills on his tongue and smell the biting stench of blood red crystals.

In a weird trick of memory Gavin pulled the boy around and almost threw him to the door. His fall was only stopped by RK900s lightning fast grip. "Get the fuck out. You don't want to ever show your face around here again, I promise", Gavin growled before he almost mechanically turned direction and went down the corridor on a well known path to the stairs. He didn't care for these damn stupid kids. He didn't. And he didn't mind walking by Joel's and his old rooms, as well. He didn't care at all.

Gavin only snapped out of his aggressive trance like state as he finally stood in the cellar. It was just one big room, a storage space and sometimes a cave for some minor deals, since the hatch wasn't as obvious to find for guys who didn't know the place well.

Down here was nothing but some shelves packed with ominous black wrapped parcels, a lone maintenance lantern and a hardwood desk. Behind it sat the guy who put the gears in motion that almost crushed Connor and the Lieutenant to death last night.

Like some mob boss he lazed about in his chair with his shoes up on the hardwood. "Gav, Gav, Gavy-baby, get a fucking hold on yourself. You are a fucking embarrassment", he almost cooed.

Gavin didn't quite remember that voice, because it hadn't even fully broken through puberty as they met last time. But as Gavin lifted his eyes from his run ragged shoes to his sunken face, he recognized the guy Joel had used to pull the youngsters in. Guys even younger than Gavin.

Joel always had dreamed of his own little cartel. His own personal little army of shitfaced goons who did the fucked up shit for him he never had had the balls to do himself. What was the guys name...?

Gavin couldn't remember and usually he tended to be so very thankful for that. But there was one thing he knew for sure, at least. "You aren't Norris."

The last time Gavin had seen and spoken to Joseph Norris, the man had grown big. A bodybuilder type that took on physically exhaustion to help him with the cravings. Got on and off of the hard stuff like Gavin went with cigarettes.

The guy in front of him was in direct comparison a rather scrawny and lanky nobody in a thick winter coat and a thin red goatee on his ill-white face. He laughed as if Gavin had told a good joke, but rather suddenly stopped wide eyed as RK900 came down the stairs and stepped behind Gavin through the doorway.

He seemed to be startled speechless for a second or two but finally let out a low and short whistle. "Daaamn, huh", he drawled out and tilted his head, before his gaze snapped back to Gavin and he pointed at the android in a rather flippant gesture. "Thought I got that thing broken for good. What the hell. Do you have some spares in storage or something?"

As heat shot with pressure right up into Gavin's head and set his field of vision alight with dancing white spots, he felt the sudden itch to draw his service weapon and shoot that utter bastard right between the eyes. Even if he never could explain it away with 'self defense' - it would save so many lives in the long run.

"Stuff that's mine is hard to break", he growled. His rough voice rumbled through his grinding teeth. "I love me some good quality builds."

He couldn't remember the last time he had been as ready to break bones with his bare hands. He felt his heart flare in vicious blind anger on behalf of his partner and his almost broken brother.

Nameless guy wasn't intimidated in the least, which wasn't beneficial to his self-preservation since he was scrawny enough to make it possible for Gavin to fold him like a puny origami figure. "Whatever", the guy said, still so flippantly.

Gavin bristled and bit down on his tongue to use the pain and get some feeling back into his chalk white face. "You almost killed one of mine. And then invite me for chat?", his face contorted into a god-awful snarl. "What is it you even want from me, you fucked up lowlife?!"

That utter shitweasle literally twiddled his thumps in his lap. Gavin was used to make people badly uncomfortable even in his more co-operative moods. This guy knew something Gavin didn't or he would piss his fucking pants right now.

He shrugged with a bored visage and answered with a sneer in his voice. "'You' were the one who snooped around at Emily's."  
His frozen smile went sharp and sour in the blink of an eye. "That damn witch got away with a lot of my shit. And you pigs of course had to nose around and ruin everything what was left."

Gavin nose wrinkled as he bared his teeth in an ugly snarl. "Always glad to help."

The guy, whose red locks curled out of a tight black beanie, not unlike the one RK900 was wearing, let out a snort that didn't depict any kind of amusement. "You are such a miserable fuck up, Badger. Always with the timing of a broken clock, always where you shouldn't be and never where you were needed."

It was that tone of voice, full of malice and disappointment, that woke things up in Gavin's mind he never even knew still rested there. He felt wild like a rabid monstrosity and wished himself claws to rip at that ghost that so suddenly had broken out of his past. Since the gods didn't grant him that kindness, Gavin stalked forward on stiff legs while a low growl tore out of his throat and slammed his hands flat down onto the desk. "What the bloody fuck-", he gasped through his boiling rage, "-are you even talking about?!"

Readhead did twitch this time, but pulled his legs from the desk in a drawn out motion that pretended for boredom. He stood up, righted himself and if the desk hadn't been between them he would have pressed surely toe to toe with Gavin. Redhead 'had' some inches on him but Gavin swore if that bastard dared to go in for a brawl, he would break him like a fucking glow stick.

"If it hadn't been always for your fucked up and completely shit faced bullshit", the Readhead murmured darkly and narrowed his eyes. "Kelley and most of the gang would still be around."

No actual physical force could have hit Gavin harder as that blow he received through some vicious fucked up words, spoken by a lowlife whose name he didn't even remember.

Gavin felt all blood drain from his face as he curled up his shoulders into a defensive stance. It wasn't like that. 'He' wasn't like that. Gavin wasn't the reason everything went to shit and he fucking wouldn't take that!

Stiff and almost numb he forced himself to straighten his spine and stood up as tall as his short frame aloud for.  
"Nobody was more responsible for Joel Kelley's death as Joel himself", he spat like a venomous reptile. "If you have a tooth to pick you should have gone to Bigby? Isn't he still in Wayne Country Jail? Have a chat with him, if you are brave enough!"

But Readhead laughed right into his face. "Why the fuck should I, when Joel's fucking murderer is standing right in front of me?!"

This made Gavin blink rather sudden out of his rage. "What- what are you even talking about, I never did-..."

"Do you think I'm dense?", Redhead said as his lips curled into a expression of utter disgust. "You know, by now, we have possibilities to look up what happened to the ones that got snatched or killed?! Joel was killed with a fucking gun that belonged to your fuckface, Gavin!!"

The pressure in his chest made him lightheaded and almost was enough to turn his stomach all on it's own. Gavin swallowed bile. "I-...", he rasped. "I didn't-..."

"You a absolutely think I am stupid, don't you?", Redhead snarled. "The gun was yours and Bigby? No one ever saw him! He was never there! He wasn't even jailed for Joel's murder, the cops didn't care at all! Like you didn't, you pig bellied turncoat!!"

Gavin couldn't help but flinch at the word. In his world it meant things. Many and horrible things. Redhead noticed and his face contorted into an ugly smiling grimace with no intent to hide its malice. "That day you just fucked off and left us all to get picked up one after another-... I red the reports you filthy sack of shit. I know you spilled everything just to get out of it with your nose still clean enough to chum up to the pigs. Bigby made a brilliant target, I'll give you that."

That... that wasn't what had happened. Not at all. Gavin stood shocked, his eyes wide while his jaw locked down through spasming muscles in his face. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know if there was even anything he could say that the guy would accept.

"That night you left us all to fight for ourselves without Kelley's protection. What do you think happened to us after that?"

Gavin's gaze flickered unsteady over this estranged but familiar face as his brain desperately worked in overdrive to find something somewhere in his sketchy memory to tear down the picture that haunting shadow painted of him.

He saw it happen. Him killing Joel, accuse an anyway immoral bastard, spill to get in good graces with the cops - and finally getting one himself through manipulation he could never explain away. His breath came short.

He didn't do this! He didn't!!

He didn't fuck off, he hadn't betrayed anyone!

...except that... he had...

"I- I was arrested, you moron", he gasped breathless through his breaking voice. "I was under arrest for-... what, three whole-..."

Redhead didn't care for what happened to Gavin that night and he didn't listen. "You still remember the guys? Hm? Aside from Kelley and Norris?!"

Of course Gavin did. He remembered most of their faces, because they haunted him so frequently in his dreams even if he didn't remember most of their names. "I-... I didn't speak with any of them, I-... "

Redhead disrupted his agitated stutters. "Joel Kelley was murdered. Joseph Norris was murdered, Henri, Jackson and Luke were killed off in a blast. Even Emily was 'fucking' murdered!!"

Gavin twitched and shifted jittery. Out of the mentioned bunch he only remembered Joseph, Jackson and Joel. And now Emily of course but-...

"What-...", Gavin swallowed and lifted his hands to rub away the cold sweat that gathered on his face. "What is it you even want to say...?!"

Redhead slowly crossed his arms and again narrowed his eyes as if he looked down at something distasteful that he found under the sole of his shoe. "I want to say, you not only got rid of us and spilled like the traitorous pig you are, you also got in bed with the fucking cops as if they weren't just a bunch of murderous bastards!", he said calmly but with an edge as sharp as ice.

Gavin's head twitched up out of his hands. Thickly he swallowed as again white spots began to dance in his vision. "I-... "

"And then you and your knew friends decided to snoop around and pick us off one after another. Our guys died and no one cared, Gavin! No one investigated any of that shit, if it didn't give them some leads to the mobsters!"

Gavin felt mortified. He had no feeling in his fingertips as his chest slowly sized shut and made him gasp for air.

Redhead reveled in these openly visible reactions for feelings Gavin wasn't even able to name. Readhead didn't stop there. "You know how Tenner died? Hm? Three shots to his back. The kid was killed in a raid because-... Who the fuck knows?! No one cares anyway?!"

Gavin blinked while the cold sweat gathered now at the hem of his collar. Redhead sighed and shook his head. "But now, you know what? I will give the pigs something to mull over."

He pulled something long and silvern out of his coat pocket and Gavin didn't pull his gun because he just couldn't bare the thought of proving that bastard somehow right about him. It could have been a knife, Gavin wouldn't have been able to care right now. Instead Redhead lifted a dog whistle to his lips.

It's thrill was almost toneless.

\- The heavy weight that suddenly charged through the doorway came so fast and powerful onto Gavin, that even RK900 with his superior reflexes wasn't able to stop it all from happening.

Before he knew what was going on, Gavin was lifted off of his feet and slammed back into the mural with so much force, it was almost enough to make him blackout on the spot. The hand that closed around his throat was big, utterly smooth and strong as steel.

Gavin stared horrified and with wavering focus into the utterly expressionless face of a big blond woman with watery blue eyes, who was instantly identified as an android through lightning white markings on her cheeks and forehead. A GI-M300, in all of her intimidating glory and Gavin was so utterly fucked right now.

Of course RK900 was immediately with him and slung his arms around the GIs throat, even with a foot stemmed besides Gavin against the wall to get enough leverage to pull that android off of him. But the GI stood unmovable and utterly unfazed.

Feeble and gasping for breath Gavin clawed for her face but she simply didn't care for his blunt fingernails scratching over her smooth and cold blue eyes. A heavy weight slammed flatly into Gavin's stomach and audibly broke something as the androids hand closed around the gun in Gavin's holster.

She threw Gavin off like a doll. Hard he rolled right over the now empty desk and slammed to the floor with enough force to push all remaining oxygen out of his lungs.

He blinked and blinked to try and get rid of the doubled yellow and black shadows that danced in his field of vision. As he pushed a hand up to his nape it came back bloody as expected.

Gavin fought against the sluggish heaviness, against the need of his brain to force a restart. Wheezing he sat up on his knees and forced his spine to straighten up.

\- only able to witness RK900s last struggles with the machine he couldn't possibly beat in a fight. The GI had RK900s arm in an iron grip and shoved Gavin's service weapon right under the left side of his jaw, right between the bone and his throat.

Gavin saw it happen.

Even through all his powerful struggles, the hammer of the gun slammed down on RK900 and the following noise wasn't something Gavin would be ever able to forget.

His mouth opened in a silent scream as RK900s limb body was thrown to the floor. Gavin couldn't look away.  
It wasn't always with the dramatics of a slowly growing pool of blood. Most of the time the heart already stopped with the gunshot. Like that, there wasn't even much blue blood that gathered under RK900s broken head.

Gavin almost brained himself as he crawled over to claw his stiff and ice cold fingers into RK900s black turtleneck sweater, just like some terrified child that felt the need to shake their loved one awake again.

He knew that it was already over. There wasn't anything to be done. Nevertheless he held gasping and wheezing onto RK900, while around him the world seemed to just stop existing. "...N- Nines...?"

"Shit, shit, shit! Put that gun down! Look at him, shit, is he crying? That's so priceless, man!"

Gavin haggard breathing pattern slowed through the heavy weight on his chest. Breathing hurt. Everything hurt. He didn't care for any of this. He wanted to go home. He only wanted to -...

"Wait, wait, I'll snap one. Just one. Oh shit man, the guys will love that!"

Gavin's head tilted down to RK900s shoulder as all of the world seemed to freeze over. He came for something but he couldn't think or remember what it even had been. RK900 needed to-...

"Guess they can locate the guy like last time. Well then, let's roll, Joey."

A lighter clicked and a fuse was fired. The low crackle of the chord almost went under in the humming static noise that filled Gavin's brain.

A door slammed shut.

A heavy bolt was put into place.

Gavin kept his eyes closely shut and, like a kid in the dark of a closet space, tried to pretend the outside world didn't exist. His energy levels, heightened only through liters of coffee and the rush of adrenaline, crashed down right over his head and all he craved for was do die.

Thick red smoke started to fill up the room and made every following breath so much harder to take. It burned down Gavin's throat like liquid fire and ice cold ashes. It tasted of acid. It was as if someone broke Gavin's chest open with a crowbar and drenched his innards in gasoline.

His muscles started to burn, sizzle and size with the sudden burst of artificially produced chemical energy that clammed down on his chest and flooded through his blood right into the completely exhausted void that was his brain.

Wide eyed Gavin tilted back, sat up and opened his mouth for gasping short and shivering breaths as his widened and watery eyes darted through the room again - RK900 laid still in front of him.

Gavin opened his mouth wide, worked his jaw. There was no voice left in his sore throat as he leaned over to claw again at RK900s black sweater. Tore at him, shook him. Another silent scream was stuck in Gavin's throat. His eyes flowed over with stinging tears again, because he couldn't possibly look away, not even to blink.

A heavy noise from above shocked Gavin into motion. Suddenly he stood, Gasping, wheezing, crying -...

His swaying body tilted to the door and he finally remembered the monsters that hid themselves behind it. He took two sluggish steps, rolled his shoulders and his head, changed direction to build up some momentum - and threw himself against the door with the weight and power of a desperate man, so used to utilize his body for blunt force and maximum damage to himself or others.

His left shoulder cracked against the wood but the door wouldn't budge. So he did it again. And again. And again.

He did it until his left arm was numb with the pain and his shoulder and side turned black and blue. So long till he couldn't breathe through it anymore while heat and blackish smoke crept through that crack under the wood.

Gavin stumbled back and opened his mouth to scream, raw and enraged like something wild and monstrous. His lungs burned with that oily red smoke that melted his brain away. He wanted it out, he needed it out. He needed to breathe!

His blunt fingernails scratched over his throat, his face, into his leaking eyes. He cried and stumbled in pain that made him shiver and shudder to pieces. With heaving shoulders, he rubbed and scratched and pulled and 'howled'.

Viciously strong arms locked suddenly around Gavin's chest and pinned his arms painfully into place. Driven by pure instinct Gavin shifted and squirmed like an eel while his legs kicked uselessly at his assailant.

But his harshly pulled in breaths turned soon enough into strangled sobs. All fight went out of him as he cried. His limbs turned heavy as if filled with wet sand. His snapping jaw locked down on the hem of a stained black sleeve. Long warm fingers scissored over his throat as a ghost whispered into his ear. "Shhh... It's alright. I know you are tired, everything will be alright. No, no, don't turn around."

The warm and so very careful fingers on his throat wandered up and locked his quivering chin into place.

Gavin blinked sluggishly and was engulfed by darkness as a band of silky fabric was shifted and tied over his eyes. A sharp tug and Gavin was blind to the world. So he closed his eyes as the relief of it made him heavy and so very, utterly exhausted.

Gavin lost his mind to an intoxicated frenzy that was only stopped as the gods showed their benevolence and made the dead alive again.

 

* * *

 

This time, Gavin's dreams were filled with fire, heat and broken noises. Shifting colors moved and stained his vision, while fading voices echoed through his stumbling mind.

> _"He didn't do that!"_  
>  _"RK-... Nines, There are no other fingerprints on that weapon..."_  
>  _"Because it was a GI android!"_

Gavin drifted through the darkness of his mind like a drowning man that clung to a broken raft, lost on an ink black ocean. Maybe he opened his eyes one time or another. He was sure there were people all around him.

> _"You know, he had once a breakdown just like that."_  
>  _"Are you sure you should be the one telling me about this...?"_  
>  _"Oh, I'm quite sure I have to if I want him to survive. Because that stubborn dickhead won't tell you. Ever."_

Gavin lost time in blinks between places and felt himself lifted around like a weightless doll.

"You are useless", said the old man that sat by the fireplace and poked at the burning wood to steer up some flying sparks. Gavin remembered that voice like a blunt knife to his heart. He sighed as he sat down besides the old man and asked himself why for all the time that was gone, he always seemed to end up here again. "Thanks, I guess... dad."

The old man wrinkled his nose, so his scarred face shifted and snarled like the vicious old dog Gavin remembered. "As if I taught you nothing at all. But you always did know better, didn't you?"

Gavin's stomach churned as he crossed his arms loosely over his lower body. He hummed in low confirmation. Objection was never an option.  
"Thank goodness, I died already. I would have died of shame, knowing I've risen a coward like that."

Gavin flinched and opened his mouth as sudden anger flooded his vision. His shoulders pulled down as he shrunk only further into himself. "What would you have me do? Huh? Shoot him?!", he murmured bitterly in the voice of an thirteen year old whipping boy.

His father lifted a hand without looking at him and slapped it hard against the back of Gavin's head. "Of course you should have! Shot that bastard, right between the eyes. He took something that belonged to you and you? You just stand there and cry!"

The old man laughed without any humor. With the poker in his hand, he pushed the ashes around as again brightly yellow sparks went flying up through a black and sightless sky. "That was all you ever did, cry about everything. Like you were the poorest thing and nobody ever could have possibly got it worse."

Gavin felt blood hot tears sting in his eyes, but by the gods he didn't want to proof that bastard instantly right again. "I can't just shoot people."

"Why not?", asked the old man with a dry snort. "When they clearly can shoot the things that belong to you. And you, of course. But what am I even saying? You were comfortable enough to just shoot yourself."

The words burned faster to Gavin's core as any kind of violence ever could. His breath hitched as he pulled up his shoulders even tighter. "I didn't want to, I-... "

"Liar!", his father shouted right into his face as the fire kindled bright red flames that licked up Gavin's unfitting shoes and trousers. "You were oh so happy to break it all off, to leave all your problems for others to solve. Broke your poor mothers heart that day!"

Gavin swallowed thickly. "I just... wanted things to stop. I needed it to stop, I-..."

"Just like a coward", grumbled his father and again let out a snort. "If someone offers you an easy solution to your troubles and you don't even think about taking it, you are an absolute moron. Did I rise a moron, son?!"

Gavin pulled his legs onto the rotting tree trunk and pushed his chin hard down onto his knees. "No, dad."

A hard and painful knock against his head made him flinch again. His father watched him full of all his usual unhidden contempt. In his left hand he held a gun by its shaft. "Then take it", he growled. "Show me the big strong man you grew up to be. Just one twitch of your finger and nobody ever has to cry again."

He lifted his brows and bared his teeth in an utterly hateful snarl. "Isn't that what you coward always wanted?"

Gavin stared wide eyed at that man he remembered so well, he even feared him in his dreams. Gavin swallowed as he took the butt of the gun into his quivering hand and stared at it with terror. He didn't want to die, he never really wanted to. But sometimes... he just thought, to stop an awful existence was preferable to a long but miserable life.

His breath hitched as he took the gun out of his fathers hand. Of course it was locked but still also loaded. "What are you waiting for?", his father mocked. "I know you are burning to do it. Always a runner, were you. That's it, coward. It's your final road to travel. You already went it down that far all by yourself."

Gavin hurt so damn much because, yes. In this moment he just wanted it all to stop so very badly. But he also knew that if he did it now, nobody would be there to care. Not even Anderson. Gavins chest felt so heavy, filled with fire and a never ending sadness, but empty all the same.

His father took a silver flask out of his coat and tipped his head back as he drunk. The liquid he drowned was of a deep crimson color and trickled down his chin into the dirt between his boots.

"Do it already and let us finally be done with it", the old man growled. "Even though he was always kind of a pushover, your brother at least grew a spine. Never started things he wasn't ready to finish."

Gavin couldn't help another hitch that moved his shoulders. Pressed a hand tightly to his mouth so that the horrible living and breathing scourge by the fire wouldn't hear him cry. In so much pain he couldn't possibly contain it, Gavin pressed his eyes tightly shut.

The weapon in his hand was heavy as lead, yet he lifted it and pressed his face to the back of the long barrel of his fathers colt. Yes he cried. Because of all things to realize, to know that nobody cared should he die, was the hardest.

He never before felt so horribly devastatingly lonely. No one cared for a hollow one.

"I do."

Gavin's eyes snapped open. There was no fire, there was no darkness. His father still sat on the rotting wood and muttered about the evils of the world while the sky went bright in the east.

Where the fire had been stood now RK900, stiff as a rod with his hands behind his back. His face a horribly disfigured mess.

It reminded Gavin of the scars in his own face. Drifting in thought, the fingers of his left hand followed the gnarled skin above his nose.

"Gavin...", RK900 cooed and leaned over, put his hands on his knees as if he bowed to speak to a child. "Gavin, honey", the voice of his mother murmured through his frame. "Someone gave you an obvious solution to a problem. So what you gonna do, love?"

Gavin stared at him and couldn't look away. Because an obvious solution to everything was the gun in his hand - but Gavin was so very scared to die. "I'm sorry", he croaked. "I'm sorry, I-..."

"Gavin... ", interrupted him RK900 with a soft murmur. "Think. Sometimes it's the things you always wanted. You can still have it all."

Gavin couldn't look away. There was only that crooked smile, the warm shine. What he always wanted? Of all things out there Gavin wanted so desperately to feel happiness. To know he was wanted. Or maybe even needed.

RK900 lifted his brows and nodded down to the gun in his hands. This had never really been a craving Gavin felt. The gun in his drawer had sung a siren song only when he had been too run down, too tired to fight the things that were always happening. When everything was just too much. And he was the only one who had to fight things all on his own.

"I- I don't want to", Gavin murmured. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes again. "I don't have to", He said with almost something like conviction shining through his voice. "Do I need to?", he asked and lifted his head again to RK900 who barked out a laugh and shook his head. "No of course not!"

Gavin sighed with relief. "Thanks..."

He didn't want to end like so many others. Defeated by the monsters that lived within his head and sometimes gnawed through his brain and heart, leaving him tired out and hollow.  
Gavin always knew, there were no monsters under his bed. The real monster lurked behind his and Elijahs bedroom door and he could hear it clamor and rage every night.

Somehow the gun in his hand didn't feel so heavy anymore. "Dad? Do you know why I took your gun?", he asked and somehow felt a serene kind of emptiness. His heart still felt heavy but RK900 smiled.

Gavin's father had no eyes for the pretty colors of the rising sun nor RK900s beautiful form bathed in morning light. He didn't see anything of that. Just drunk his concoction and didn't care for anyone but himself. "I'm sure I'm about to find out", he drawled venomously.

Gavin hesitantly mirrored RK900s warm smile before he lowered his gaze to the gun in his hands.  
There was no hesitation as he released the safety catch. "Yeah", he murmured. With a self assured motion he lifted the gun smoothly to his fathers head. "I guess we will. "

 

* * *

 

Gavin twitched awake while the gunshot still echoed through his mind. His silent breaths came way too fast and caught in his sore throat, because... he shot his father, didn't he...?

Like he killed Joel?

With a sharp inhale, he panicked because he couldn't remember. Oh, please. Oh please...!

Gavin blinked. A silent gasp shook through him, as his dry and reddened eyes started to sting. Cold shivers ran down his spine and made his teeth noisily clatter together. The cozy blanket around his shoulders stored much needed warmth that soothed the stiff and so very painful ache in his strained and cramping muscles. Every limb felt sore and heavy, every joint hurt like there was sand grinding in his cartilages.

Even breathing hurt so much since his throat was dry enough to make him unable to speak or scream.

The more intense the pain, the more he panicked, the quicker he gasped and rasped for air, the more he was hurting - ...

A broken noise garbled out of his hellishly dry throat as he tried to shift his arms under himself to get up somehow. To move. To do anything at all that didn't reduce him to a cowering, whimpering mess.

A warm and heavy hand suddenly laid down over his left ear and pressed Gavin's swaying head a little tighter against the broad and warm body he was resting on.

Gavin didn't fight it in the end, because it was all so very warm. His ear rested on RK900s sternum. The androids chest sounded almost hollow beneath the chassing. There wasn't a heartbeat, but the steady sound of flowing liquid.

The thumb of said hand gently caressed Gavin's left cheek and he could feel RK900s low murmur all through his broad chest. "Everything is alright. Don't worry. You are home. Everything is fine. You are save."

Gavin's breath hitched sorely as his ice cold fingers clawed into the soft black fabric under his fingertips. His chest sized shut.

The weight that pressed down onto his lower back moved suddenly upwards. In steady four points of contact, it trotted up all the way to his left shoulder.

CA-T007 stepped painfully careful around and over all the blackish bruises that covered Gavin's left side and snuggled it's head tightly against Gavin's left cheek. The smooth little cat tongue swiped away all the tears that already started falling.

For the first time in his life, Gavin openly cried into the open arms of a loved one.

RK900 let him. Held him. His deep caring murmurs soothed the pain he carried with him for so long like he was just made for that. As if he was made just for Gavin.

"When there ever should be another time", he whispered lowly into his ear. "When you feel like you aren't worth anything. Please. Gavin. Come to me."

His arms curled even tighter around Gavin's frame, still so cautious about his injuries. "I will prove you wrong", RK900 murmured in utter conviction.

Gavin didn't know what to say to that. So he didn't say anything. With a deep soundless sigh he curled his fingers into RK900s sweater and closed his eyes to rest.

For now, he was save. He was at home.

**Author's Note:**

> Ridiculously long, this one
> 
> And a surprising lot of android gore. 
> 
> PDA. PDA...! Got it...?! GOT IT?!
> 
> Gavin never changed Andersons name on his phone. Anderson was once a hero, after all.
> 
> I first wanted to go with 'Wolverine' but then I thought of a guy in yellow tights and... It just didn't work. Since honey badgers are equally tiny and fearless, it fits. And the name is a lot cuter, anyway. 
> 
> Gavin is a troubled guy that never really got a chance to leave the heaviest stuff of his baggage behind. 
> 
> So RK900 will help him with that.  
> Big strong robot with big strong frame can carry lots and lots of luggage. 
> 
> Why he's still alive? Because I said so and because of reasons I will pull from my hat in the next one. 
> 
> So much thanks for reading :]


End file.
